Changing the statute of limitations in no way changes the burden of proof. In my jurisdiction anyway there is no way in hell someone would be charged solely on a victim’s recollection from decades ago. Most likely no one would be charged with anything based on one account from a week ago. I’ve dealt with multiple sexual assault cases that were started from victims coming out long after the crime occurred. Very few got prosecuted because there was no other evidence. But I did get some convictions because the investigation turned up other evidence. Like consensual intercepts. Like confessions. Guilt can fester over decades.
I wish all you victims good luck. Have at it.
Good points, but yes, I have seen old charges based upon nothing but old memories.
And even so- let us say it’s a old, old abuse case, when the suspect was 19 year old, and now he’s 50, found religion, stopped drinking, has a steady job, wife ,kids, respected in the community- and not even a whisper of abuse in the last 30 years. Is it right to ruin his life, his family’s life and everything over a stupid thing he did when he was young, stupid and drunk?
I just dont see the value there to society.
A interesting study:
What if instead of reforming himself, the 50 year old is unmarried, an atheist, has no kids, and although has not committed anymore crimes, is really just an asshole that nobody likes. Does that change your opinion?
Not that much. Has he had any other abuse cases?
Even if the evidences the prosecution is relying on are unlikely to have been adulterated by time, it doesn’t mean that you can have a fair trial long after the fact. Other evidences that the accused could use in his defense are likely to have disappeared, for instance. It might even be that there wouldn’t have been a prosecution in the first place if those informations have been still accessible. For instance, Joe’s uncle has uncontroversial photographic evidence that Joe was at his place at the time of the murder. One month after the fact, he just shows the picture to the cops and they exclude Joe from their list of suspects. 30 years after the facts, Joe’s uncle is long dead, nobody knows about the picture that ended up in the trash after his death and Joe himself doesn’t even remember that he was at his uncle’s place on this day. So, Joe, who wouldn’t even have been considered as a plausible suspect at the time ends up being sentenced because the only piece of evidence that has survived the passage of time randomly happens to be one that incriminates him.
A statute of limitations is necessary simply because the passing of time is likely to reduce the possibility for the accused to mount a proper defense. You can’t have a fair trial after 30 years for this reason alone, regardless of how reliable the surviving evidences against the accused are.
Excellent post/user name/avatar triple combo.
Agreed. Further, even in states like mine with no statute of limitations on any felony, if you can show that the prosecution was dilatory such that it acted to your prejudice, the state can be barred from prosecuting you under a due process theory.
But if that were the reasoning behind them, why is murder explicitly excluded from statue of limitations? Surely in a murder trial more than any other you need to be sure the defendant gets a proper defense.
Seems to me that it’s really society just saying it doesn’t hold a grudge that long. You arent the same person you were 30 years ago, the state isn’t going to hold a crime over you that long.
That makes sense for shoplifting or drug offenses. It doesn’t for murder, rape or sexual assault. The right of the victim to see justice done overrides any inclination to let bygones be bygones.
IMO because when the crime is heinous enough, people don’t want the culprit to “get away with it” and are willing to curtail the rights of the accused to make sure the crime won’t stay unpunished. They picture someone everybody knows committed an heinous crime walking free in the streets with a satisfied smile on his face, and are perfectly willing to put innocents at a high risk of being sentenced to prevent such a thing from happening.
It’s possible also that the legal fiction in the American system that the defense doesn’t have to demonstrate anything since it’s up to the accusation to prove the crime beyond the shadow of a doubt can more easily lead to the conclusion that whether or not the defense can easily have access to exculpatory evidences is unimportant (while the civil law system emphasizes their importance), and as a result that the problem of the passage of time hindering the defense is unimportant as well. But of course, in practical terms, not having access to exculpatory evidences is a serious problem for the defendant, regardless of the legal system.
The exclusion of serious crimes from statutes of limitations isn’t universal. Over here, there’s a statute of limitations for murder too.
Even if it were the reasoning, since it doesn’t address the real problem of the difficulty for an accused to mount a defense when charged with crimes that occurred decades ago, it would just mean that there’s need for change.
Murder definitely shouldn’t be excluded, for the reasons you mention at the beginning.