A two-year-old trespassing conviction was overturned by a Washington County judge on June 29 — providing welcome relief for Deborah Busch of Knox, and her boyfriend, Rory Russell.

Busch, who had served as an Albany County legislator, is convinced that her bid for a second term was stymied by Enterprise coverage of the trespassing case. A Republican in the predominantly Democratic Hilltown district and legislature, she lost in November to Democrat Chris Smith by about 200 votes.

“I know the needs of the Hilltowns and served them well,” Busch said the day after Judge Kelly S. McKeighan handed down his decision.  “We lost our traction…One thing people in the Hilltowns won’t tolerate is criminal behavior.”

Busch, who served as minority whip in the legislature and who works as a nurse manager, went on, “I am an upstanding citizen. I fought against injustices. I tried to keep government clean.”

Russell owns a home on Lake George in Fort Ann. His next-door lakeside neighbor, Thomas Bolen, filed a statement with State Police, saying that on July 13, 2014 he and his family made an unexpected stop at the Bolens’ summer cottage and saw Busch and Russell “crouching down on the porch.”

Bolen also stated,  “I have told Rory and Deborah on several occasions to stay off the property” and that he wanted them “arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

His wife, Carole Bolen, signed a similar statement, asserting, “Thomas has told Rory and Deborah on several occasions to stay off the property.”

The Bolens declined comment this week.

Judge McKeighan writes that the facts of the conviction are largely undisputed: Russell and the Bolens had an “acrimonious relationship” and, when Bolen pulled in and saw Busch and Russell “crouched down near their front door,” he yelled at them to get off his property, and they ran back to their property next door. The Bolens found a lead-testing kit where the two had crouched.

“The Bolens’ lead-abatement techniques to their summer home were not methods required by federal and state statute,” Russell wrote in an email to the Enterprise last week. “This resulted in lead contamination to my property and person.”

Judge McKeighan quotes the law, stating, “A person is guilty of trespass when he knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in or upon premises” and noted that the appeal turned on whether or not a front porch constitutes “premises which are at the time open to the public.”

The judge writes, “By coining the phrase ‘premises which are at the time open to the public,’ the law recognizes that in our society there is a nebulous area between these two extremes where a ‘premises,’ even one that is privately owned, may be ‘open to the public.’”

He found the scant case law compelling, citing a 1972 Batavia City Court Case, which dismissed a trespass charge against a woman for being on her neighbor’s porch: “In our particular society it is normally proper to go to a neighbor’s house or at least to a neighbor’s front porch…without the danger of being charged with Trespass…unless one has been specifically told or ordered not to come onto a neighbor’s front porch.”

During the November 2014 bench trial in Fort Ann, covered by The Enterprise, Bolen said he hadn’t had a direct conversation with Busch about trespassing. Bolen said he was speaking “in the context of 20 years of problems” in which the neighbors knew they were not allowed on one another’s property.

McKeighan continues, “As a practical matter, to hold, as the People suggest, would subject to threat of prosecution, any member of the public visiting a person’s porch without prior consent, the chilling effect upon our society would be intolerable. A footnote in his decision is even more specific: Any visiting neighbor, lost individual, office seeker, petition carrier, delivery person, postal employee, salesperson, even those seeking consent to be on the porch would be subject to a charge of trespass.

“In a free society,” the judge writes, “a balance must be struck wherein some degree of limited encroachment is tolerated in order to allow people to freely converse, while retaining for the property owner the right to revoke a person’s ability to so advance.”

McKeighan says that the lower court was in error to look at Busch’s intent in being on the porch, citing the law that, a person, “regardless of his intent,” has license and privilege to enter or remain “upon a premises which are at the time open to the public.”

Since, at the trial, it was shown that the Bolens never “personally communicated” to Busch that she was not allowed on their property, McKeighan reversed the trespassing conviction and dismissed the charge.

Russell told the Enterprise that he and Busch plan to pursue criminal charges against Carole and Thomas Bolen — filing a false instrument, a misdemeanor — for stating to police that Thomas Bolen had told Russell and Busch “on several occasions” to stay off their property, which led to their arrest for trespassing.

Busch said at the time of the bench trial that they had paid $12,000 in legal fees.  At that time, Assistant Washington County District Attorney Devin Anderson had said Russell and Busch could have had the case adjourned in contemplation of dismissal so long they stayed off of the Bolens’ land. If they had agreed, the case would have been sealed as long as they hadn’t been arrested again in six months’ time.

Russell, who owns a brokerage specializing in the security alarm industry, wrote in a July 3 email to The Enterprise, “Filing of these false statements has resulted in great harm to both Deborah and I. Our professional reputations have been irrevocably tarnished and the expense to defend ourselves financially exhausting. This has been two years of mental distress.”