Trespass Penalties in Wisconsin Property Crimes

Question: What are the penalties for criminal trespass in Wisconsin? Possible defenses?

Answer: The penalty for criminal trespass in Wisconsin, that is a misdemeanor. The general penalty is that it requires from zero to up to nine months in jail, and from zero to $10,000 fine. There’s also the possibility of probation. There are quite a few defenses, actually, to criminal trespass. Criminal trespass requires not only that you’re trespassing, but that you have some sort of criminal intent, and that is the reason for the trespass. So very often, there’s some sort of intent argument that you were either there mistakenly, or you had some intent that was not criminal, and then, therefore, it is not a crime, even if it is a trespass. There’s also, you know, again, the mistake, or it could be not a trespass either because you’ve been invited there by somebody, you have permission to be there, something like that. That would be another type of defense.