Why this man who barged in on his cheating wife could go to jail for 15 years

yahoo lifestyle ^ | January 20, 2018 | Cindy Arboleda

[Mount Athos]

Sean Donis’s wife, Nancy Donis, 38, said she was going to dinner. Donis stayed behind to watch their 5-year-old son. When he couldn’t find his iPad, he turned on the Find My iPhone app to locate it.

The software showed the electronic device moving toward an unknown location; he had a hunch that his wife had taken it, and he decided to follow. He arrived at a house and opened the unlocked door. On the second floor, he found his wife in bed with her boss, Albert Lopez, 58. With his iPhone, he recorded two brief videos of them in bed.

The New Jersey man got a letter last July informing him that a grand jury had indicted him on charges of felony burglary and unlawful surveillance for the April 2016 incident.

Donis’s wife worked for Lopez as the billing manager for his orthopedics practice.

Lopez said he was so desperate to get the enraged husband out of his home that he asked Donis “if he wanted to die.”

“Kill me. I don’t care,” he said the desperate husband responded.

Lopez also noted that Donis’s wife said they were separated, and he thought Donis was out of the picture.

The husband’s lawyer, Howard Greenberg, told jurors that the husband actually “deserves a medal,” not a prison sentence, for uncovering his wife’s unfaithfulness without physically harming his rival.

However, despite the fact that Lopez slept with Donis’s wife, prosecutor Nabeela Mcleod asserted that Lopez was a victim — a victim of Donis’s breaking and entering his home and recording him and Donis’s wife without their consent (Donis shared the videos with his wife’s relatives). He now faces a possible maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

[taxcontrol]

burglary
noun, plural burglaries. Criminal Law.
1.
the felony of breaking into and entering the house of another at night with intent to steal, extended by statute to cover the breaking into and entering of any of various buildings, by night or day.

trespass
noun
1.
Law.
an unlawful act causing injury to the person, property, or rights of another, committed with force or violence, actual or implied.
a wrongful entry upon the lands of another.
the action to recover damages for such an injury.
2.
an encroachment or intrusion.
3.
an offense, sin, or wrong.

According to the article, the door was not locked so there was no breaking into. Second, nothing was stolen. So it still seems more like trespass to me unless there is some funky state definition???

Am I missing something?

[kearnyirish2]

Too true!

[TexasGator]

Your statement was not vAgue

[Migraine]

Your statement was not vAgue

Perhaps not; but your comprehension of it was.

[SunTzuWu]

A person is guilty of committing burglary in the third degree - the least of the burglary offenses - when he or she “knowingly enters or remains unlawfully” in a building with the intent to commit a crime therein.