So as not to hijack this thread…http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315827
Why is a statute of limitations imposed on certain crimes? Isn’t this a ‘we give up’ attitude? ‘We haven’t caught him in the past five years, so, he gets a pass on this crime’. What’s the reason that a person can get away with a crime just because time has passed?
WAG:
After 5-7 years, eyewitnesses and other evidence would be slim. Memories would not be as clear. Beyond that, I’ve got a big 
There are two major reasons:
After a certain amount of time, witnesses are less reliable, evidence will have degraded, and so on. For (relatively) minor crimes, prosecution would be next to impossible.
It prevents an evil government official from harassing an enemy by charging him with minor crimes from a long time ago.
Difficulty with evidence and witnesses is one reason, but another has to do with putting (relatively) unimportant matters in the past and letting minor wrongs go.
It removes (some) of the poltics from prosecution. Imagine someone getting dragged through the courts for shoplifting a CD at age 19 because now, 30 years later, he’s running for office and the record-store owner is a political opponent. Statutes of limitation help limit prosecution to things that are actually important by disallowing trumped-up charges way on down the line.
On preview, what friedo said.
I’ve always wondered if part of the rationale was a sort of “suffered enough” attitude: you’ve been living with the guilt and fear of being caught for seven years. That’s punishment enough.
But even as I type this, it seems like an incredibly naive and unlikely notion.
Flipside: “If I can just make for seven years, I’m in the clear. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Well, there is also the matter of alibis. Somes dudes- whom the police were *sure *commited the crime- tunred out to have witnesses or other evidence that they were elsewhere. After enough time, witnesses die, memories erode, and evidence for your defence gets lost or destroyed.
Can you imagine having to prove your deductions from a Tax return 10 years old?
And face it- memories that old are worthless, and thus witnesses mean nothing. This was proven when the whole ‘recovered memories’ scam was de-bunked. In fact- I’d like there to be a SOL (longer than petty crime, of course!) on even Capital crimes for that very reason. This is one reason why I hate that show “Cold Case Files”.
friedo has it. Protection against the government was a major feature of the common law. The Constitution incorporated this in several provisions along the same lines, such as the ban on bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and suspension of Habeas Corpus, as well as the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
The courts do not necessarily believe that. Witness testimony from murders that occurred 20-30 years ago or longer is allowed, and have been key in prosecuting those murders.
Is there a statute of limitations on crimes such as murder? I have heard of cases here in the U.K. where people have been commited of murder some 30+ years after the offence was commited, usually thanks to new forensic techniques that weren’t available at the time the crime was commited. I also hear of new appeals for witnesses over ten years after the event which always seemed pointless to me but I guess they have had success in the past to warrant them doing it so often.
No U.S. state has a time limitation on the prosecution of murder cases. Murders that occurred more than 40 years ago have been successfully prosecuted.
Conviction obtained in 2002 for 1961 murder.
What about other crimes where evidence only comes to light at a much later date? For example, someone commits a burglary leaving a set of fingerprints behind but are not caught at the time. Thirty years later they commit some minor offence and have their prints taken and put on file, the prints are run through a computer and an exact match comes up to the burglary prints taken thirty years ago, they could still be arrested right?
Probably not. I am not aware of any state in the U.S. that has a time limitation of more than 10 years for prosecuting non-violent crimes like burglary.
IIRC, nope. The statute of limitations was originally designed so that people wouldn’t have to live in fear of being arrested for less-than-capital crimes decades later. The idea that they would live in fear their whole lives was anathema to the writer of the law. Would you, as a 50-year-old, want to be held accountable for a lapse of judgement you had when you were 19?
It also prevents prosecution for “crimes” committed while protesting a previous regime, for example.
I see what you mean silenus, but in the case of a career criminal who the police know to be guilty but can’t get enough evidence for a conviction it would be handy to be able to arrest them for previous crimes should sufficient evidence arise.
Alas this is turning into more of a GD on the pros and cons of the system rather than a GQ so I will butt out.
Well, with the sort of person to whom the term “career criminal” is usually applied, it’s not that hard to find evidence of other criminal activity within the time frame (e.g. Al Capone goes to jail for tax evasion, not bootlegging or murder). Someone who shoplifts a magazine at 18 and disturbs the peace at 32 is not what is usually meant by a “career criminal”.
Not only “capital” crimes but any other crime can get extended statutes of limitations, it depends on jurisdiction. For example I looked up a PDF that tells me that Minesota has no SOL for Murder, Manslaughter, Kidnapping, and Sex Offenses for which there is DNA evidence. For Sex Offenses w/o DNA evidence
it’s 9 years, or 3 years from when police learn of it if the victim was a minor and unable to come forward in the 9-year period; for most other felonies it’s between 5 and 6, for everything else it’s 3. Here in my jurisdiction, Murder, Manslaughter, Kidnapping, Child Sexual Abuse, bribery and grand theft of public funds do not have a SOL.
Yes, but “the Courts” and “Good Science” are not always synonomous. :dubious:
Older memories are extremely prone to tampering, and modification through later episodes. You may have a memory, then later see a movie with a scene which is rather similar- but differs in important details. It is quite possible for that film memory to cloud your event memory.
To be honest- “eyewitness testimony” is so unreliable - even with fairly recent memories- that if it wasn’t a cornerstone of Common law, it would have been thrown out years ago. It is also extremely easy to slightly change or tamper with a memory by questioning. Show a crime in a film, with 3 dudes getting out of a car. Establish that the witness remembers 3 dudes. Don’t make the number of guys a critical factor, just trivia. Then ask a few questions like “when the 4 men got out of the car, did they all go in the same direction?” (mixed in with dozens & dozens of other questions like “what color was the car?” “did they have guns?” etc, etc)- and at the end of a couple of hours like this- the witness will swear they saw 4 men get out of the car. Both the defence and prosecution use tricks like this when they are “getting your testimony straight”- I admit that sometimes it very well could be done unwittingly, however.
Note how in the 'recovered memories" child abuse scam- quite a few men & fathers were sent to prison for decades based upon 'recovered memory" testimony from a/their child- now decades later. later, this was found to really be an “implanted memory”. But those men had still been convicted by “the Courts”, just the same (I think most of them have been released).