Legal Question - Last night's 48 Hours

Factual Questions
1

I was watching CBS’ 48 Hours last night, and one of the segments was about a woman who was abandoned when she was 4 days old. The background:

A cop receives an anonymous phone call indicating that a baby has been abandoned and hidden under a gazebo in a town park. The cop goes to the location, and finds the baby wrapped in a blanket and inside a garbage bag. The temperature was 4 degrees F.

The baby was rescued and put up for adoption. Fast forward 30 years, and the woman who was abandoned begins to look for her mother, and by a small miracle, mom is looking for daughter and they find each other.

The mother apparently admits that she abandoned the baby, but won’t say why. The father is found, and he also won’t give a reason. (not that the reason matters).

My question is, why weren’t these two people thrown in jail? They abandon a child in harsh conditions and the child would have died if it wasn’t discovered by the cop in short order. What difference does it make that it was 30 years ago? They should be punished for this… is this a statute of limitations issue?

end of story note: After a couple of meetings, the mom has cut off communications with her long-lost daughter again. What a quality individual.

2

Most likely, yes, it would have been a statute of limitations issue. Even if the state had provided for some sort of statute allowing prosecution up until 10 years after the chiled 18th birthday, she still would have been outside the statute of limitations. Even attempted murder typically only has a 10-20 year statute of limitations.

Now if the child had died, it might have been a different story, as murder generally has no SOL (although it’s debatable as to whether murder could be proven up).