What Is a Criminal Trespass Warning in Texas?

A criminal trespass warning in Texas is not a criminal charge. It is documented notice under Penal Code § 30.05 that your entry onto a specific property is forbidden. The warning carries no fine or jail time — but once you have it, going back can be charged as criminal trespass, usually a Class B misdemeanor.

Peer Recognition

Martindale-Hubbell® 2026 Honors

Independent peer-review ratings recognizing legal ability and ethical standards.

Awards reflect peer-reviewed ratings only. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

Start with the oddity: the phrase "criminal trespass warning" appears nowhere in the Texas Penal Code. The warning is a police and property-management practice built to satisfy one statutory word — notice. Under Penal Code § 30.05(a), a person commits criminal trespass by entering or remaining on property of another without effective consent when the person "had notice that the entry was forbidden" or "received notice to depart but failed to do so." The warning form an officer hands you in a store parking lot is pre-packaged proof of that notice — signed, dated, and logged so a prosecutor can later show you knew you were barred. Our criminal trespass charge page covers the offense itself; this page covers the warning: what it is, how long it lasts, who can issue it, how to get it lifted, and what happens when the State says you ignored it.

What Is a Criminal Trespass Warning, Exactly?

A criminal trespass warning (CTW) is a documented statement — verbal or written — that you are no longer welcome on a specific property. In the DFW area it usually takes one of three forms: a printed warning form completed by a police officer at the owner's request, a letter from a property manager or corporate office, or a plain spoken instruction from someone in charge of the premises. All three do the same legal work, because § 30.05(b)(2)(A) defines notice to include any "oral or written communication by the owner or someone with apparent authority to act for the owner."

The written police version exists for evidentiary convenience, not legal necessity. A typical form records your name and identifiers, the property address, the person who requested the exclusion, the officer's name and badge number, and a line for your signature. Most departments then log the warning in their records system, which is how an officer responding to a call months later can confirm within minutes that you were previously warned. Refusing to sign changes nothing — the officer notes the refusal, the body camera captures the delivery, and the notice element is satisfied either way.

What a warning is not matters just as much. It is not a charge, not a citation, not a court order, and not a conviction. Nothing about it appears in the state criminal history database. There is no fine to pay and no court date to attend. It is closer to a formalized "you're banned" — with the Penal Code standing behind it the next time you cross the property line.

Is a Criminal Trespass Warning a Criminal Charge?

No — and the distinction drives everything else on this page. A warning is the predicate for a charge, not the charge itself. The comparison looks like this:

One practical wrinkle: because the warning lives only in the issuing agency's records, there is nothing to expunge if you never get charged. Expunction under Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 55A erases arrest and prosecution records — a warning generates neither. People sometimes ask us to "get the CTW off my record"; the honest answer is that it was never on the record that background checks search, and the practical fix is a rescission letter from the owner, not a courthouse filing.

What Does Penal Code § 30.05 Actually Require?

Section 30.05 is built on three pillars: entry, lack of effective consent, and notice. "Entry" means "the intrusion of the entire body" — § 30.05(b)(1) — so leaning over a fence line is not an entry, while stepping one foot past it with the rest of you following is. The property can be land, a building, residential land, agricultural land, an RV park, an aircraft, or another vehicle. The State must also prove a culpable mental state — intentional, knowing, or reckless — supplied by Penal Code § 6.02(c), because § 30.05 itself is silent on the point.

The statute then lists five distinct ways notice can be given, and a warning card is only a species of the first:

• Oral or written communication by the owner or someone with apparent authority — § 30.05(b)(2)(A). This is where CTWs, manager bans, and "leave and don't come back" all live.
• Fencing or an enclosure obviously designed to exclude intruders or contain livestock — (b)(2)(B).
• Posted signs reasonably likely to come to the attention of intruders, indicating entry is forbidden — (b)(2)(C).
• Purple paint marks on trees or posts — (b)(2)(D) — with exacting specs: vertical lines at least eight inches long and one inch wide, the bottom of each mark between three and five feet off the ground, spaced no more than 100 feet apart on forest land or 1,000 feet apart elsewhere. Texas landowners use purple paint precisely because signs get torn down; paint stays.
• A visible cultivated crop grown for human consumption — (b)(2)(E).

The takeaway for anyone holding a warning: the State does not need your CTW to prosecute a trespass — a fence or a sign can do the same work. But when a warning exists, the State's notice proof gets dramatically easier, which is exactly why owners and police bother with the paperwork.

Who Can Issue a Trespass Warning — the Property Owner or the Police?

Both, but the authority always traces back to the owner. The statute requires communication "by the owner or someone with apparent authority to act for the owner," and Texas courts read that phrase functionally: store managers, apartment leasing agents, security guards, school administrators, and — critically — police officers requested by any of them all qualify. Many retail chains and apartment complexes in Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant Counties keep standing letters of agency on file with local departments authorizing officers to issue warnings on the company's behalf, which is why an officer can bar you from a store at 2 a.m. with no manager in sight.

The Waco Court of Appeals confirmed in 2024 just how little formality the statute demands. In Lopez v. State, No. 10-23-00237-CR (Tex. App.—Waco Aug. 8, 2024), the defendant argued that the written trespass warning he had received covered the wrong address on an 18-acre tract. The court affirmed his conviction anyway, holding that notice under § 30.05 "does not require a formally-issued criminal trespass warning by law enforcement" — the owner's posted eviction notice and the property's perimeter fencing each supplied statutorily acceptable notice on their own. The case cuts both ways: it deflates the myth that "they never gave me an official warning" is a defense, and it reminds prosecutors that the CTW form is a convenience, not an element.

The flip side protects defendants. When the person who barred you was not the owner and had no apparent authority — a feuding neighbor purporting to ban you from a shared easement, a former roommate excluding you from a unit still on your lease — the notice element fails. Apparent authority is a fact question, and at trial the defense gets to probe exactly who asked for the warning and what right that person had to speak for the property.

How Long Does a Criminal Trespass Warning Last?

Texas law sets no duration, no expiration, and no renewal requirement — § 30.05 never addresses the question. The practical default is that a warning lasts until the owner rescinds it. Some property owners and agencies voluntarily write a term into the form — one- and two-year windows are common drafting choices — and when a warning carries a stated expiration, the State has a notice problem prosecuting an entry after that date. When the form is silent, assume it is indefinite.

The Dallas Court of Appeals enforced exactly that logic against a defendant who tested a fresh warning. In Pan v. State, No. 05-13-00321-CR (Tex. App.—Dallas Mar. 4, 2014), a man warned out of a university library left when told, then walked back in about an hour later believing he had official business there. The court rejected his argument that criminal trespass "can only be committed by remaining on the property after a request to leave" — the statute's express terms make it an offense to enter after receiving notice that entry is forbidden. Leaving compliantly the first time bought him nothing; the re-entry completed the offense. The same opinion turned away a due-process attack on the warning, noting the restriction was narrow — one building, specified hours — and stripped the student of no protected interest.

Three duration lessons fall out of the statute's silence and the case law. First, a warning is effective the moment it is communicated — there is no grace period. Second, the passage of time alone does not erode it; agencies routinely treat warnings as live years after issuance. Third, changed circumstances — new ownership, a new management company, your own changed status (you later sign a lease there, for example) — do not automatically void a warning, but they generate genuine fact disputes about consent and authority that a defense lawyer can litigate.

Can You Get a Criminal Trespass Warning Lifted or Rescinded?

There is no statutory appeal, because no statute creates the warning in the first place. No judge signs it, so no judge can quash it. The lifting process is persuasion, aimed at whoever controls the property:

• Private businesses. Write to the store or property manager — calmly, briefly, without relitigating the incident — and ask what conditions would restore access. Chains often route these requests to a regional office or loss-prevention department. A short letter from a lawyer frequently gets read where a walk-in apology does not, and it avoids the cardinal error of showing up on the property to ask in person, which is itself a violation.
• Apartments and HOAs. If you are a tenant, a guest of a tenant, or a co-parent picking up children, leasing offices have practical reasons to negotiate scope — access limited to specific hours, escorted entry, or a defined pathway. Get any modification in writing; an oral "it's fine now" from one employee is exactly the kind of consent dispute that ends in an arrest.
• Public entities. Libraries, transit agencies, city recreation centers, and universities issue trespass warnings too, but unlike private owners they answer to constitutional constraints, and many publish administrative review or appeal procedures for exclusions. Ask in writing for the entity's written trespass policy and invoke its review process. The narrowness of the ban matters — in Pan the court emphasized the warning's limited scope when rejecting the due-process challenge, so a public entity imposing a blanket, indefinite exclusion from core public spaces stands on much weaker footing than one restricting a single building during business hours.

Until a rescission exists in writing, treat the warning as fully active. "An employee told me it was okay now" carries little weight with a prosecutor when the company's own records still show a live exclusion.

When Does Violating a Warning Become a § 30.05 Charge?

The moment your body crosses onto the property. The earlier warning supplies notice under § 30.05(a)(1), so the offense is complete at entry — no fresh warning, no second chance to leave, no requirement that anyone ask you to depart. That is the precise holding of Pan, and it is how these cases get charged across the DFW counties: an employee recognizes you, calls the police, the responding officer pulls the prior warning from the records system, and an arrest follows under the warrantless-arrest authority for offenses committed within an officer's presence or view.

From there the case runs the ordinary misdemeanor track: booking, magistration under Code of Criminal Procedure article 15.17 (usually within 24 to 48 hours), a bond that is typically modest for a Class B with no violence allegation, and filing in a county court at law. Expect a bond condition or a renewed warning barring you from the property — violating that raises the stakes from a new misdemeanor to a bond revocation. For the offense-level details and the squatter-specific 2025 changes, see our pages on criminal trespass and the squatting trespass enhancement.

A hypothetical, clearly labeled as one: a Frisco retail employee is fired and handed a CTW on the way out — routine at many big-box stores. Three weeks later she walks in to return a pair of shoes, reasoning the ban surely meant "don't come back as an employee." Loss prevention recognizes her, police respond, the records check shows the warning, and she is arrested for Class B criminal trespass — even though she was a paying customer at that moment and nobody asked her to leave. Under Pan, the entry alone completes the offense. The lesson: a warning covers the entire premises, for every purpose, unless its text says otherwise.

Criminal Trespass Penalties: The Full Punishment Ladder

Violating a trespass warning is charged under the same grading scheme as any other criminal trespass. The default is a Class B misdemeanor, with the variants set by § 30.05(d):

Two grading details reward attention. The weapon-only tier in § 30.05(d-3) — added in the 2021 constitutional-carry session — makes walking past a no-guns notice a $200 ticket, but converts to a full Class A misdemeanor if you stay after someone with authority personally tells you weapons are forbidden. The third-degree-felony tier in § 30.05(d)(4), tied to smuggling of persons, arrived with the border-security legislation of the early 2020s — a reminder that "simple trespass" now carries a felony ceiling in the wrong factual setting. Sections 30.06 and 30.07, by contrast, are separate sign-based offenses for licensed handgun carriers and are outside this page's scope.

Elements the State Must Prove After a Warning

To convict, the State must establish every element beyond a reasonable doubt:

1. Entry or remaining

Your entire body intruded onto the property (§ 30.05(b)(1)), or you stayed after receiving notice to depart. Surveillance video, officer observation, and your own statements are the usual proof.

2. Property of another

Someone other than you owned the property or held a greater right of possession. Tenancy disputes, co-ownership, and easements all attack this element.

3. Without effective consent

No one legally authorized to act for the owner permitted the entry. Consent from a person you know lacks authority does not count — § 1.07(a)(19).

4. Culpable mental state

Intentional, knowing, or reckless conduct, supplied by § 6.02(c). An accidental boundary crossing on unmarked land fails here.

5. Notice

Any § 30.05(b)(2) form — the prior warning, a fence, posted signs, purple paint, or a cultivated crop — received before or at the time of entry, or a notice to depart you failed to obey.

What Defenses Work Against a Trespass Charge Built on a Warning?

The warning makes the State's notice proof easier; it does not decide the case. The defense theories we evaluate on every § 30.05 file include:

• Notice never reached the defendant. The warning names the wrong person, was issued to someone else entirely, or rests on a sign no reasonable person would have seen. Identity mix-ups in warning logs happen more often than agencies admit, especially where the original encounter involved no photo ID.
• Scope of the warning. Warnings describe specific premises, and prosecutions stumble when the entry happened on a different parcel, a public sidewalk, or a part of a complex the form never covered. Lopez was litigated on exactly this terrain — which address a written warning on a multi-address tract covered — and while the State prevailed there on independent notice (fencing and a posted eviction notice), scope remains a live defense where the only notice is the paper itself.
• No authority to exclude. The person who requested or issued the warning was not the owner and lacked apparent authority — a neighbor, an ex with no possessory right, an employee acting outside any delegation.
• Effective consent after the warning. Someone legally authorized to act for the owner invited you back — a rescission letter, a manager's documented re-invitation, a new lease. The consent must come from someone with authority; § 1.07(a)(19) strips effect from consent you know is unauthorized.
• Claim of right. Tenants, co-tenants, and occupants in eviction limbo can contest the "property of another" and consent elements. Lopez canvassed the tenancy cases: an estate in real property requires an express or implied lease-contract, and whether one exists is a fact question for the jury, not the warning form.
• Mental-state failures and mistake of fact. A reasonable, good-faith belief in permission to enter — formed, say, from an employee's invitation — can negate the culpable mental state through the mistake-of-fact defense in § 8.02.
• Statutory defenses. Section 30.05(e) shields firefighters and emergency medical services personnel discharging official duties under exigent circumstances, along with utility and telecommunications workers performing duties on the property, among others.
• The First Amendment, in one narrow lane. For the campus-repeat Class A enhancement, § 30.05(d-2) lets a defendant defeat the punishment bump by proving the conduct was protected speech or expression — a punishment-stage issue written directly into the statute, and one of the few places the Penal Code names the First Amendment expressly.

Where the case is provable, the work shifts to outcome engineering: a reduction, a diversion slot, or a deferred disposition that preserves the record-relief paths covered below.

County Practice Notes: Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant

Collin County. Class A and B trespass cases arising out of Frisco, Plano, McKinney, and Allen are prosecuted in the county courts at law at the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney; fine-only Class C variants stay in municipal and justice courts. Retail and apartment warnings dominate the local docket mix, and staying off the property between arrest and disposition is the practical baseline for any negotiated outcome.

Dallas County. Misdemeanor trespass is heard by the county criminal courts at the Frank Crowley Courts Building. Dallas carries a steady volume of trespass filings tied to commercial property and transit, and case timelines generally run longer than in the suburban counties because of docket size.

Denton County. Cases from Denton, Lewisville, and The Colony are handled at the Denton County Courts Building. The county's mix includes more rural-acreage and lake-adjacent files, where fencing and purple-paint notice questions actually get litigated.

Tarrant County. Misdemeanor trespass is prosecuted at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center in Fort Worth. There, as everywhere, the complaining property owner's stance carries real weight — an owner who confirms in writing that the dispute is resolved materially changes the negotiating posture.

Across all four counties, prosecuting offices have operated diversion and conditional-dismissal options for low-level nonviolent misdemeanors; criteria shift year to year, so current eligibility has to be checked against the county's program rules when your case is filed. Juvenile trespass referrals — common in school and mall settings — run through a different system entirely, covered in our juvenile criminal trespass guide.

What Should You Do After Getting a Criminal Trespass Warning?

Treat the warning as active and permanent, then work the problem in order:

1. Capture the details now. Photograph or keep the form; if the warning was verbal, write down the date, location, who said it, and the exact words while memory is fresh. Scope questions get won with details.
2. Do not test it — for any reason. Not to retrieve belongings, not to return merchandise, not to "talk it out" with the manager. If property of yours is on the premises, arrange retrieval through the owner in writing or ask the police department about a civil standby.
3. Map the property line. Pin down what the warning covers — the store or the entire shopping center, one apartment building or the whole complex — and stay off all of it until the scope is clarified in writing.
4. Pursue rescission in writing through the channels described above, and keep every reply.
5. Bring in counsel early if there is a backstory. Warnings entangled with divorces, child exchanges, evictions, terminations, or protective-order proceedings are rarely just trespass matters — the same conduct can double as a protective-order violation or feed a pending civil case. If you were arrested rather than warned, the analysis shifts to the charge itself; our jail-exposure explainer walks through what actually happens in custody.

Can a Criminal Trespass Case Be Dismissed or Expunged?

Frequently, yes — trespass is one of the more resolution-friendly misdemeanors when the defense is run deliberately. Proof problems on notice, scope, authority, or consent can produce outright dismissals. Where the evidence is solid, a negotiated deferred adjudication under Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 42A ends in a dismissal and discharge, which can later support an order of nondisclosure under Government Code chapter 411, subchapter E-1. Class C versions resolved by deferred disposition in municipal or justice court end in dismissal and can support a full expunction. Acquittals and dismissals generally open the door to expunction under Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 55A, erasing the arrest itself.

The sequencing matters more than people expect: a quick guilty plea to "just a misdemeanor" forecloses record-relief paths that a slightly slower, structured resolution preserves. Our expunction and record-sealing practice page covers eligibility in detail, and the companion § 30.05 explainer digs further into the underlying offense.