You are right: this is a state law issue, so there are at least 50 different answers to the question. Generally, once the state’s statute of limitation has run, the state can’t prosecute that person.
Statutes of limitation protect the legal process. After many years, prosecutors’ witnesses are likely to be less reliable and records may no longer be available. Critically, a defendant may also have lost exculpatory records or lost track of witnesses who could prove his innocence. If someone asks me today where I was last Tuesday at 4:00 PM, I could probably find surveillance video, cell phone records, and maybe financial records to confirm my memory. I may even remember who I had lunch with. Ask me the same question about ten years ago and I can’t tell you and I can’t figure it out unless I’m very lucky.
But calculating when that statute of limitation starts and when it is tolled can be interesting. Take New York, for instance. The statute of limitation on Class A (i.e., serious felonies) never runs. Your assault and battery seems to be a Class B felony (which includes both assault with intent to cause serious physical injury, or assault with depraved indifference to human life). Article 120 | NY Penal Law | Assault Menacing Stalking | Law
However, when calculating the statute of limitations, you exclude any period during which “the whereabouts of the defendant were continuously unknown and continuously unascertainable by the exercise of reasonable diligence.” It turns out, if the victim were the only person who could identify his assailant, the state can argue that his whereabouts were unknown and unascertainable because they didn’t know his identity, as long as the police were diligent in investigating the crime to discover who he was. See NY v. SEDA, http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ny-court-of-appeals/1135106.html
[QUOTE=The Court of Appeals of New York]
[T]he toll is not conditioned on the People’s knowledge of the defendant’s identity. The police may be ignorant of the whereabouts of a perpetrator of a crime where they have identified the perpetrator but lack knowledge of his or her physical location, or where they have not identified the perpetrator at all and thus cannot determine where he or she is. The phrase “whereabouts of the defendant” must be deemed to include both situations.
[/QUOTE]
I also recall reading some situation where the DA filed charges against John Doe (unknown assailant) just before the statute of limitations for rape ran out. Basically, he charged a DNA profile - the logic being - “we believe the perp is the person who fits this DNA profile, so this specifically identifies him. We don’t need to know his name or alias, just have a means to specifically identify him - and we choose DNA. When we apprehend the person who matches this DNA, we will proceed with charges against him.”
A victim coming out of a coma and being able to testify is essentially the discovery of new evidence. It’s the equivalent of collecting a DNA sample years after the crime occurred or finding an old surveillance tape that somebody had forgotten in a file cabinet. You can unexpectedly find evidence that connects a person to a decades old crime.
The general principle is that this is covered by statutes of limitation. If the evidence isn’t found within a given amount of time, prosecution is no longer possible. But it varies by jurisdiction; South Carolina and Wyoming apparently have no statutes of limitation. You can be prosecuted for any crime decades after it occurred.
I still say a “stunt.” I’d like to see how the courts handle it if anyone is actually brought to court aft the SOL has run. Seems to be more PR than prosecution:
It seems to me that the key point is, or should be, the point at time when a suspect can reasonably know that he is a suspect (such as when he’s charged). At that point, he can start gathering up and saving all of those potentially exculpatory records. But nobody knows their own DNA profile, so a charge against “the person bearing this DNA profile” is (or should be) irrelevant.
Would there perhaps be an issue with the credibility of a witness who was in a coma for six years? I’m assuming there would be evidence of substantial brain damage.
A convenience store got robbed at gunpoint in 1992. The store clerk went into a panic and blacked out all memories of the robbery so there was no description of the robber. The police investigated but didn’t have any leads and the crime went unsolved.
Move ahead to 2017. The store is closing and a crew is clearing out the supply closest. They find an old VHS tape and out of boredom decide to watch it during their lunch break. They discover that the tape recorded the 1992 robbery. And it’s an excellent copy which clearly shows the robber’s face.
The police re-open the investigation and somebody says “Hey, that robber is Joe Smith. Except twenty-five years younger.” The police locate Smith and bring him in for questioning. They also obtain old photos of Smith and confirm he’s the guy in the video. So he’s arrested and charged with the 1992 robbery.
But Smith says he’s innocent. He offers this defense, *“There’s this guy I used to know named Frank Jones. He was a crazy criminal and he hated me because people all said we looked alike. And he used to brag that he would make himself look more like me when he committed a crime so the police would blame me. You can ask anyone who knew us back then.”
“And what’s more, I have a solid alibi. Back in 1992 I was working a full time job. This robbery occurred in the evening and I worked the evening shirt. You can check with my boss and my co-workers and they can all confirm I was working. And you can verify it with my time card and even the security camera at my job which will prove I was working when Frank robbed that store.”
“At least, I could have proved all this in 1992. Frank was killed while robbing a bar in 2000. The store I was working at was a video store and they closed twelve years ago. My old boss retired to Florida and died five years ago. The time records and security footage are gone from back when the store closed. I haven’t seen any of my old friends or co-workers in years.”*
So what’s fair? Should Joe Smith go to trial and have the available evidence presented in court? Is that fair when the available evidence happens to work against him while other evidence has been lost? Smith has an elaborate defense which could have easily been tested at the time the crime occurred. Is it fair to him to prosecute him twenty-five years later?
I guess the logic is “what identified a person?” A person could be charged even if he refuses to tell his name. A person can be charged based on an alias, if that’s what he’s known by. The logic is that a person is uniquely identified by his DNA, so this isn’t a case of “we have laid charges against a mystery Caucasian male 30 to 40, 5’10” or so, with dark brown hair wearing blue jeans and a brown jacket." The question is whether the ID supplied in the warrant properly identifies the individual. I assume the courts believe it does, so far. Until someone’s identical twin shows up…
In my view, states don’t have to have a statute of limitations, or can limit it to certain crimes. If they have one, however, it should mean something and not be circumvented because they couldn’t catch the guy in time. The whole premise assumes that some people will not be charged because they’re not prosecuted within the time limit. Charging someone by DNA identification alone, seems to me to be an improper effort to get around the statute. I’d rather they just rescind the statute if DNA evidence, or whatever, makes it obsolete.
Sure, going back to what I said above. If Bob Johnson goes by “Smooth-Money”, and the police charge Smooth-Money with a crime, then Bob will know they’re referring to him, and can make sure that his alibi gets recorded and so on. Further, if Smooth-Money decides to go on the run, and one of his associates hears that he’s wanted, they can say “Yeah, I know who that guy is”, and tell the police his current whereabouts. But that’s not possible with something like DNA or fingerprints.
Well, that’s the $64,000 question… or the 10-to-life question. Is the purpose of identifying the person when charges are laid to allow the person to know they are charged? Or is it to ensure that the charges are not open ended? We lay these charges before the SoL event, then can arrest any random person who fits the profile long after.
IMHO (and it counts for zip) the purpose of a limitation is exactly as described earlier - how can you mount a defense years after the event? Laying charges is an evasion of the intent of the statute. Not sure how it works for people who become fugitives, but my opinion (again, worth nothing) is that you would want the prosecution to prove the person truly intended to flee and evade justice to allow a far later prosecution.
The problem with the DNA identification is that it comes close to a presumption of guilty until proven innocent - we don’t know who this guy is, but we are so sure that DNA establishes guilt 100% that he should have known he would need to defend himself even if we didn’t catch him in time. DNA, like fingerprints or a facial photo is simply an identifying characteristic.
If you lay charges against a DNA profile and it turns out to be identical twins, which twin are you actually charging? Wouldn’t you have to lay charges against two people at the beginning to make it stick?
I was under the impression that “innocent unless proven guilty” meant that the prosecution had to prove its case. That would suggest that the defense doesn’t need evidence to prove they didn’t do it, but just to show the prosecution can’t bring evidence to prove they did. I am aware there are some defenses that require evidence by design (I can’t remember the word for that.) But, as long as those aren’t relevant, I don’t understand why there is an issue.
I was under the impression that the statute of limitations started when the crime was discovered, not when it happened. And that actual new evidence could reopen the case. The issue was more that you couldn’t just keep the case open for years, hoping the guy would show up.
If it really is just “it can’t be more than [amount of time] since the crime,” then I don’t approve of it at all. It just means that keeping the crime a secret is sufficient to get away with it. So you’d better kill all the witnesses.
The defendant does not have to prove his innocence, but the defendant is entitled to present proof of his innocence. In most cases the defendant will be convicted unless he offers some evidence of innocence. For example, let’s say that a substance found in his possession tested positive as cocaine. The defendant can just argue that the state’s testing procedure is invalid, but the jury is not exactly going to take his word for it. On the other hand, if the defense presents expert testimony from its own chemist that shows the substance was not cocaine, the jury very well may agree.
I would think that since people are frequently charged with murder, and with kidnapping where the body disappears, that simply eliminating the witnesses is not a guarantee of anything except a longer sentence and a crime with no statute of limitations.
Murder usually creates a flurry of evidence collection. Other crimes, not so. Many financial records only need to be held for 7 years, so bank records etc. will disappear. If a phone call figures into an alibi, or witnesses - unlikely to find that information after 10 years.
I think you could take that principle too far. Suppose a DA just filed a charge against “the person who robbed the 7-11 on April 20, 2011.” Sure, they haven’t made an arrest and don’t have any suspects but they do have evidence the crime occurred so they have reasonable grounds to believe somebody out there fits that description. And the description is of a unique individual who was clearly connected to the crime.
Look at the scenario I gave in post #29. The prosecution does have evidence; they have a videotape showing somebody who looks like Joe Smith committing the crime. That’s enough evidence for a jury to convict.
Joe Smith can’t just stand mute. He has to actively defend himself and discredit the evidence that points towards his guilt.