At common law, a defendant could not be prosecuted for murder unless his victim died within a year and a day of the act inflicting injury. See Commonwealth v. Lewis, 381 Mass. 411, 413-414 (1980), cert. denied sub nom. Phillips v. Massachusetts, 450 U.S. 929 (1981); 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *197-198, *310-311; 4 H. Broom, Commentaries on the Laws of England 235-236 (1869) (“no person shall be adjudged by any act whatever to have killed another, if that other does not die within a year and a day after the stroke received, or cause of death administered”). Otherwise, the loss of life would be attributed to natural causes rather than the distant act inflicting injury. R.M. Perkins & R.N. Boyce, Criminal Law 46 (3d ed. 1982). This requirement envisioned that the death must be shown to be “sufficiently connected with the act.” 3 W. Holdsworth, A History of English Law 315 (3d ed. 1923). See 1 W.R. LaFave & A.W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law § 3.12(i), at 421 (1986) (“[t]he difficulty in proving that the blow caused the death after so long an interval was obviously the basis of the rule”); 3 E. Coke, Third Institute *53 (if the person alleged to have been murdered died after a year and a day “it cannot be discerned, as the law presumes, whether he died of a stroke or poison, &c, or of a natural death; and in the case of life, the rule of law ought to be certain”).(1) In 1980, after a complete review of the history, rationale, and current status of the rule, we abolished it, deeming it “anachronistic upon a consideration of the advances of medical and related science in solving etiological problems as well as in sustaining or prolonging life in the face of trauma or disease.” Lewis, supra at 414-415.
The defendant contends that this court should replace the year and a day rule with a some other limiting rule. He contends that to have a potential prosecution hanging over his head indefinitely deprives him of due process and that, when death occurs so long after the injury, the trial would turn into a costly, time consuming, and confusing battle of the experts. In support of the need for a definite time period beyond which prosecution for murder is barred, the defendant cites our statement in Lewis that such “a task of adjustment is characteristically for the Legislature, but if not undertaken by that branch, may fall to the courts” (footnote omitted). Id. at 419. The Legislature has not acted to alter our conclusion and we have not been convinced that any new knowledge or fresh arguments require our further intervention.
Our research indicates that in no jurisdiction has a court abrogated the year and a day rule and subsequently imposed a new time limit on murder prosecutions. Eighteen other States do not follow the year and a day rule.(2) In four of these States, California, Maryland, Missouri, and Washington, it was the Legislature that replaced the year and a day rule. See Cal. Penal Code § 194 (West 1988 & Supp. 1999); Md. Ann. Code art. 27, § 415 (1996); Mo. Ann. Stat. § 565.003 (Vernon 1979 & Supp. 1999); Wash. Rev. Code Ann. § 9A.32.010 (West 1988 & Supp. 1999). Georgia, Illinois, New York, and Oregon held that failure to include the rule as part of the comprehensive criminal code adopted by the Legislatures in their States effected its abrogation. See State v. Cross, 260 Ga. 845, 845-846 (1991); People v. Carrillo, 164 Ill. 2d 144, 149-150, cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1146 (1995); People v. Brengard, 265 N.Y. 100, 107-108 (1934); State v. Hudson, 56 Or. App. 462, 465 (1982). And Connecticut determined that it is doubtful that the year and a day rule ever was a part of its common law. Valeriano v. Bronson, 209 Conn. 75, 90 (1988).
**The nine remaining jurisdictions that have abrogated the rule have done so at the initiative of the judiciary. Four of those nine, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, have expressly or impliedly stated that the rule would not be replaced by a similarly definite time period. ** See People v. Stevenson, 416 Mich. 383, 393 (1982) (“Fears about murder convictions for death 5, 10, or even 20 years after the injury are therefore unfounded where proximate cause is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If such proof is available, the conviction is justified”); State v. Beaver, 119 Ohio App. 3d 385, 395 (1997) (“Today, the length of time between the act and the result is only one consideration in assessing the prosecution’s showing of proximate cause”); Commonwealth v. Ladd, 402 Pa. 164, 173-174 (1960) (“Society is free to prosecute murderers without a statutory limitation . . . *t is therefore not a strange idea to put no restriction of time upon the death of the victim and to require only proof of causation of conventional quality at the trial”); State v. Pine, 524 A.2d 1104, 1107 (R.I. 1987) (“We think this standard [proof beyond a reasonable doubt] is a sufficient safeguard for the criminal defendant. We do not find, therefore, that our abrogation of the year-and-a-day rule requires us to replace it with some other time period within which death must occur”). The remaining five jurisdictions that have judicially abrogated the rule, the District of Columbia, Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico, and North Carolina, have not committed themselves to a definite or indefinite time allowance. United States v. Jackson, 528 A.2d 1211, 1218 (D.C. 1987); Jones v. Dugger, 518 So. 2d 295, 298 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1987); State v. Young, 77 N.J. 245, 252 (1978); State v. Gabehart, 114 N.M. 183, 186 (Ct. App. 1992); State v. Vance, 328 N.C. 613, 619-620 (1991).
As we explained in Lewis, a primary factor making the year and a day rule obsolete is the advance of medical knowledge and techniques. Lewis, supra at 414-415. Medicine can now sustain the critically afflicted for months and even years beyond what might have been imagined only decades ago. Parallel progress has also been made in the development of diagnostic skills, so that problems of medical causation are more readily resolved. Modern pathologists are able to determine the cause of death with greater accuracy than was possible in earlier times and thus causation, even in complex cases, is a less difficult problem in modern day prosecutions. Although the defendant objects to the likely necessity of reliance on expert testimony in instances where death does not closely follow the act, neither this reliance on experts nor the presence of difficult issues of causation present unfamiliar problems for modern day courts. See Jackson, supra at 1216. Accordingly, the abrogation of the rule does not make the determination of guilt so inherently unreliable or undeterminable as to deprive a defendant of procedural due process.