From Teising v. State, decided Thursday by the Indiana Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Molter:
Article 6, Section 6 of the Indiana Constitution requires that all township officers "shall reside within their respective … townships," and they forfeit their position if they don't. Defendant Jennifer Teising resided within West Lafayette's Wabash Township when she was elected township trustee in November 2018. But after the COVID–19 pandemic spread to Indiana, she sold her home, bought a travel trailer, and left for a nomadic life while continuing to work remotely. Sometimes she stayed in Florida, sometimes she stayed with friends in Anderson, Indiana, and sometimes she traveled. But she hardly ever stayed in Wabash Township. And despite growing controversy over her residency, she refused to resign.
Usually, the State resolves residency disputes like this through a civil quo warranto action to remove the official from office. But here it chose stronger medicine. It convened a grand jury, which indicted Teising for twenty–one counts of theft on the theory that by spending most of her time outside the township, she forfeited her office. And once she forfeited her office, none of the twenty–one paychecks she kept collecting belonged to her even though she continued working as the trustee remotely. After the parties agreed to a bench trial, the trial court convicted her on all counts.
A unanimous Court of Appeals panel vacated the convictions in a published opinion. The panel concluded Teising never stopped complying with the constitutional residency requirement because she never established a legal domicile somewhere else, and she therefore didn't forfeit her office. We now grant transfer, and we too conclude Teising's convictions must be vacated, but for a different reason. We don't need to reach the constitutional residency question because, either way, the State didn't introduce evidence that Teising acted with the criminal intent required for theft—evidence that she believed she wasn't supposed to continue collecting her salary for the work she kept performing remotely. And without criminal intent, the only available remedies were civil, such as a quo warranto action to remove Teising from office or a conversion claim to recover allegedly misappropriated money….
