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It gets harder and harder to defend yourself the farther from an event you get. To the point that it would be almost impossible. So we dont let the state prosecute people like that, assuming the crime isn't serious enough.
Let's say someone you were friends with committed a murder 30 years ago.
You haven't spoken to them in 20 years, dont even remember their name.
What are the odds you will be able to defend yourself if someone accused you of helping that person?
Would you be able to tell people what you ever doing 30 years ago? Would you have an alibi? Do you have all your documents from back then to prove you didn't hide anything?
Oh, and we dont imprison people just because they admit to something. We still have to properly prove they did it. If we did just go "well they said they did it" you would absolutely have people being coerced into admitting to crimes they didn't do to let the actual criminals go.
Not to mention evidence gets really stale after that long too. At the end of the day, once a certain amount of time passes after a crime is committed, it's a waste of time and resources to go after a culprit. You don't have the evidence needed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt and they while they will lack defense, the reason they lack that defense will be entirely understandable to any jury.
On the flip side this is why rape cases were allowed to be reopened in many instances after the statute of limitations. The ability to DNA test made them viable cases all of a sudden. Even though DNA testing is far less reliable than people believe.
DNA testing is far less reliable than people believe.
when used correctly it is for elimination, not addition, of suspects, just like fingerprints. Even if 1/100 people have the same fingerprints the chances that 2 of these particular 6 people that are the most equally likely suspects have the same is low. Current standard DNA testing is usually about 1 in 11 million so a large city will usually contain a few matches.
My only issue with that is still that people’s memories are not going to be accurate after a certain amount of time. Like say for example, someone were to accuse you of rape and that it happened in 1975. That’s 50 years ago. Let’s say the prosecution demands to know where you were and what you were doing on the night of the alleged rape, but you honestly have no idea as it was so long ago. The prosecution could spin this as you not having an alibi even if they themselves have no proof you were there. All they might have is the testimony of the victim, but keep in mind the victim might not be able to accurately remember the circumstances either.
There’s a very important reason why statute of limitations exist, and that’s to ensure a fair trial with reliable evidence and that nobody can be convicted without ensuring they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
I would say that in a perfect world the jury would take those things into consideration when thinking about "reasonable doubt". However, we all know the justice system can be as much performative as it is subjective.
Ah, but you see you have no explanation of where you were on the night of the rape, and the victim says she remembers clear as day that it was you who raped her in that dark room while she was half unconscious and on drugs. You wouldn’t be sitting in court unless you were guilty! Take him away, boys!
Like I said, the system is not perfect. A good lawyer would object and have that stricken from the record... jury still heard it though...
Yeah, but that's not how that works either. A good defense attorney should be able to introduce enough doubt on cross examination to get to a point where the jury doesn't fully believe the statement, but it's not stricken from the record and no jury can ever un-hear something, even if it later is.
(Edit: autocorrect)
Im not disagreeing with you... if everyone did what they were supposed to/allowed to, we wouldn't need a justice system. But... people suck and we can only do our best.
Exactly. Laws aren't made for the obedient, but instead for the disobedient.
I’ve come to find that in this day and age people care more about feelings than facts. Having a fair trial is not in the interest of feelings.
Even though DNA testing is far less reliable than people believe.
i was always under the impression that they were something like 99.9% accurate. is that not the case? could you please provide a source for that? i'd love to take a look at it.
99.9% accuracy applies to DNA tests to determine paternity, where the samples are drawn and handled/stored in laboratory conditions. Forensic DNA testing is subject to all manner of vagaries that complicate accuracy even before you get to the point of accuracy of perfectly collected, stored and handled conditions.
Here is a decent overview to jump off from. It can get technical but some of it is the perceived notion of how accurate it is, the propensity for human error, and when you test you are essentially looking at a small snippet of the DNA. Its kind of like identifying a book from one sentence in it and assuming no other books include that sentence. Its not terrible, but a DNA "match" isn't as concrete as people believe.
Why DNA Evidence Can Be Unreliable | HowStuffWorks https://share.google/giCHJuagypjorreSB
ah ok. i took your statement to mean something more along the lines of DNA testing, in and of itself, is unreliable. As in, the testing gives inaccurate results.
I'm assuming your statement is more akin to "DNA evidence isn't proof of much more than that person's DNA was at the scene of the crime."
Not even necessarily that. Lab quality can be suspect. I read about one time someone thought there was a serial killer running around but it turned out something like a factory worker for gloves or evidence bags contaminated all these different murder samples. Going back to the example of a book, if I said the evidence shows this book starts with "In the beginning..." we may say that's the Bible! But there are probably lots of books that start that way or merely start that way as commentaries on the Bible. If the Bible happened to be on trial, this snippet could suggest the Bible was involved, but it wouldnt be enough to say it was the Bible on that alone.
interesting! thanks for explaining.
Adding on to what the other commenter said, the correct way to use the DNA evidence is to take that snippet ("In the beginning...") and look at your top suspect(books) and eliminate all of those that DON'T contain that phrase, meaning those COULDN'T be the one, and corroborating your suspicions on the ones that DO contain it. You need some X required pieces of corroborating evidence to prove without a reasonable doubt that someone is guilty, with some pieces of evidence having greater weights than others.
True, but don’t dismiss the fact that in the same way, any book that doesn’t have “in the beginning” anywhere can be eliminated as a potential source.
They are that accurate in that they can say two DNA samples collected and maintained in ideal conditions have the same “pattern”.
When you’re using it to eliminate people, it’s very good. When you’re using it to confirm someone you already suspect for other reasons, it’s still pretty good.
But it’s not very good for “we have no idea who this is, let’s DNA test everyone” because the pattern isn’t unique enough. It’s only sampling a small part of a person’s DNA, and that part is random junk. The fidelity is limited by the randomness only being so random.
Why random junk? Because the parts of our DNA that are genes don’t vary much. Everyone has the same “make a liver” genes, because a random variation there means a defective gene, no liver, and the fetus dying long before birth.
Last, the DNA from a crime scene isn’t going to be in ideal condition. We don’t really have a way to quantify how damaged it is. That damage could result in the test matching the wrong “pattern”. When you already have people in mind, the odds of this kind of match aren’t very high and there should be other corroborating evidence. But it really can’t be the only evidence, and it makes DNA dragnets not a good idea.
Usually, they get a sample from a close relative to match. With how people use Ancestry and those services, there's a very large database of possible supporting matches to prove a suspect.
For databasing for the LEO side of things, it's for reoffending purposes. So proof can be made quicker. Intentions at first sure could be, "this is here to prove you're innocent!" But it's not the purpose or viewpoint from the LEO perspective.
A scary proportion of people exonerated by new DNA techniques were convicted based solely on a confession.
The rate of such later-proven-false confessions plummets when police start preserving video of all interrogations.
You do the math.
Jon Burge in Chicago used to torture weed dealers until they confessed to homicide cold cases.
He did this for decades until it finally broke as a news story.
Hundreds of credible claims were made against him in the aftermath, but how many hundreds of more lives were ruined by his thuggery? People likely died in prison for crimes they didn't commit.
I think there needs to be some sort of reform where cops are no longer afforded every benefit of the doubt. Yes, there should be some deference to the professionals, but when every single benefit of the doubt is afforded to cops up and down the chain, it leads to situations where crooked motherfuckers become immune to scrutiny and are allowed to continue their criminal acts under the protection of their badge.
In all honesty, the first step is to acknowledge who and what the police force is.
Being a cop is basically one of the best paid jobs you can get with absolutely no skills or qualifications at all so long as you don't mind truly shitty hours. Yes there are cops who are in it out of a sense of duty and others in it for the power grab, but the bulk of the police force is at best made up of people who weren't good enough to do anything else because even your most basic office job will pay at least as well unless you're taking the absolute shittiest hours and let you see your kids once in a while.
When you start from this premise questions start to arise.
There are others, but I think these are the starting point. Yes, running cops in pairs is more expensive, but they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer and need help.
Yes, we also need to seriously start rooting out the bad cops and the cops who cover for bad cops, but just starting from the perspective that 90% of cops are incredibly dumb and acting accordingly will make a huge difference.
If we did just go "well they said they did it" you would absolutely have people being coerced into admitting to crimes they didn't do to let the actual criminals go.
I'd like to introduce you to the plea bargain, the cops coerce innocent people into false confessions every single day.
Plea bargains aren't done by cops. Coerced confessions by cops are indeed a problem, but they are separate from plea bargaining.
Yeah, plea bargains involve a lawyer. Coerced confessions are why people should have a lawyer present while talking to the police. It's not to say lawyers can't fuck up and plea when they shouldn't, but you're a lot better off with a relatively objective third party running mediation.
This is why you demand to have a lawyer present when question by police.
Sure, it's a coerced confession from a prosecutor
Sometimes it's not even the cops fault. The lady linked below tried to implicate her boyfriend in a murder he didn't commit to get him out of her life; but cops kept finding holes in her story. So in the end, instead of admitting she made it up, she implicated herself in the killing as well and they both went to prison. The worst part is that this derailed the investigation and allowed the killer to keep on killing. People are weird.
Whoa. So Palvinac didn't do it either after she made up the story? Wild!
That is a mental-illness study right there.
Yeah, watch "Catching Killers" on Netflix, the episodes about The Happy Face Killer.
One of the weirdest stories ever.
Thanks on my list now.
There was a guy who lived with his father. Guy had some mental issues, and was on medications. His father disappeared and he reported it. The cops were convinced he killed his dad. They held him for questioning for an extremely long time. Guy was off his meds requesting them to get his meds. The cops got the guy to confess to killing his dad, and sent him away ... without a body, based solely on he could have done it with not on his meds for some unknown reasoning. Turns out pops had went out of town to visit guy's sister.
Lmao cops offering plea bargains where you live? That's wild.
And you think we need more of that?
Hell no, absolutely not, we need less of it.
Why would you assume that's what the comment is saying lol? Real "so you hate waffles" moment here
This is exactly what they mean when they say the majority of Americans read at a sixth grade level.
A plea bargain is usually taken if the defendant would almost certainly be convicted by a jury, otherwise their lawyer will tell them to just go to trial.
I the prosecution even bothers to bring a case, they are almost certain they will get a conviction at trial (and they're probably right). There aren't as many 50/50 cases as TV would lead you to believe.
97% of criminal indictments end in a plea deal.
I don't think it is because 97% of cases are obvious wins for the State either. There is a general feeling among folks in the criminal justice system that they should just take their licks and get the punishment over with ASAP. This would lead someone who might otherwise have a decent shot at getting off at jury trial to just plea down.
The problem with this is that if you have multiple convictions, punishment gets worse and worse. So taking plea deals in your teens/20's can bite you in the ass 8 years later when you're an otherwise productive member of society caught in the wrong place, wrong time.
Personally, unless the defendant is genuinely not going to commit more crimes, I don't think it is always a good idea to take a plea deal. In the pretrial phase, everyone sorta just takes the State's word that the evidence exists, that the police reports are accurate, etc. But the truth is that the prosecutor was just handed a case file the day or two before a hearing and they're trusting the cops to have done their jobs properly.
I don't trust cops to do their jobs properly. So if there's a case where a small amount of review can poke holes in the state's case, nobody would ever know because the defendant is just taking a plea deal without the adversarial process of truthfinding.
And like, even if the defendant actually did the crimes, that's not the point. The question should always be "can the state prove it beyond a reasonable doubt" in the pretrial phase.
Anywho... just my thoughts as someone who spent time as a prosecutor. If half the people who get arrested demand a jury trial, the entire justice system would collapse overnight. It would be the quickest way to get criminal justice reform too. Because if every BS arrest took up as much resources as a murder trial, the courts, DA, and cops would all be begging the legislators to change the law to make changes to what needs to be prioritized on a statutory level.
But what evidence would that person have that i helped, 20 years ago? Shouldn't it be roughly equal? I dont think accusation with no evidence means much right?
Or you can have the state change the law post facto and use civil instead of criminal courts. Seems to work these days.
Kinda weird to need this sort of protection, though, you'd think the whole "beyond a reasonable doubt" thing would keep people safe since it'd be equally difficult to prosecute as to defend.
In my experience with jury duty, a lot of people believe a person is guilty just cause they are in court. Literally have heard more than once, "if he's not guilty then why is he here?"
Because he had a bad day? I hope you don’t have a bad day.
We already wrongfully imprison tons of people for crimes that happened recently.
If we also started imprisoning people for old crimes that would get a lot worse.
A "reasonable doubt" allows a lot more doubt than I think most people would be comfortable with.
The problem is the evidence can be corrupted or saved both ways. In our system, the tie goes to the defendant.
Imagine a lawyer asking you - so where were you on August 6, 1988 and who can verify your whereabouts?
My mother… hopefully?
Except you can still be arrested and thrown in jail for weeks or months before it’s sorted.
You're assuming too much competency on the part of any potential jury pool.
People get convicted all the time on witness testimony alone, even though it has been proven to be unreliable.
If we did just go "well they said they did it" you would absolutely have people being coerced into admitting to crimes they didn't do to let the actual criminals go.
I have something to tell you, and you might want to be sitting down for it
we dont imprison people just because they admit to something. We still have to properly prove they did it. If we did just go "well they said they did it" you would absolutely have people being coerced into admitting to crimes they didn't do to let the actual criminals go.
Uh .. hate to break it to you but this particular tactic happens all the time. While the prosecuted still go to court, a tape of them saying "I did it" handles the rest. Even if 'i did it' is a cut from a 9 hour integration where the full sentence was 'why do you want me to say I did it? I didn't have anything to do with it'
Believe it or not... Still jail.
Don't we imprison people for confessing ?
Given that the burden of proof is on the state, it doesn't make sense to have a statute of limitations. The state can just not prosecute if the evidence is stale, insufficient. But if they have a good enough case, they should be able to. The burden is not on the defense to provide an alibi.
Also, imagine you are suspected of a crime, but the police can wait to charge you with it however long they want. You have to live your entire life with the possibility that at any time they could just arrest and charge you. Thats considered cruel and unusual punishment.
That makes a lot of sense, but… it also raises the question: how are they able to prosecute priest sex abuse cases (in 2025) that happened in the 1990’s? How would the prosecution prove their case?
There were no cell phone cameras or surveillance cameras back then.
I suppose there could be home movie evidence, but that’s never been mentioned in any of the articles I’ve read.
Statute of limitations. Not statue.
Except they've coerced confessions and used that to imprison people for life countless times
I have a question : does not that works just reversed compared to what you stated ? I mean it seems easier to defend yourself as time pass because the burden of proof is on the accusation. the more time pass the more the testimonies and other proofs are unreliable, and the defendant has plausible answer to every question : I do not remember. So I have the impression the time limit to prosecute is because it becomes too easy to defend
We definitely imprison people for coerced confessions all the time. Wtf are you talking about
Why is the statute required, though? Presumably, any prosecutor would have equal difficulty in getting any witnesses to speak with any certainty? They wouldn't have any documents, or CCTV, etc for it. I have thought the 'reasonable doubt' requirement would already cover the issues you raised.
So it almost feels like the statute is more to avoid wasting the court's time, rather than actually help defendants.
Why is the statute required, though?
There are a few separate arguments for them:
they put pressure on people to pursue legal claims within a reasonable amount of time
they prevent people from having to preserve evidence for many years, just in case
they can prevent people from holding a possible legal claim over someone as a threat
they can prevent people from spending their whole lives worrying about suddenly having to face consequences for something they did many years earlier
there is an argument that going after someone many years after the event tends to feel more like revenge or point scoring than justice and can seem cruel or pointless (especially for people who are old or unwell)
These arguments tend to feel much more compelling when it comes to, say, parking offences or collection of small debts than, say, murder, so the former often have much shorter limitation periods than the latter.
I have thought the 'reasonable doubt' requirement would already cover the issues you raised.
"Reasonable doubt" kicks in at the end of a criminal trial. It doesn't stop someone from launching an investigation, making an arrest, or winning a civil claim.
There may also be concerns that investigators, prosecutors, and courts may be overly confident about their ability to divine the truth from decades-old scraps of evidence. But yeah, you'd hope that they would try and apply the same standards regardless of how old a case is.
plenty of witnesses are claiming things under oath that never happened, and they truly believe they are correct.
guy got convected for rape based on eyewitness seeing her attacker for a fraction of a second in a dark parking lot. Decades later DNA testing pointed at a different attacker. The woman still swears that the original guy was the attacker.
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But surely that buck falls with the prosecution.
You could give absolutely no defence, and if the crime is sufficiently old, the prosecution won't be able to have enough evidence to secure a conviction.
I'm still struggling to see why there are limitations. Shouldn't it just be based on the evidence available here and now, with the onus falling on the prosecution, not defence?
I think you are missing that it is possible for evidence to point to something that is not true? If you just looked down that would feel like convincing evidence that the Earth was flat.
When it’s harder to find evidence, it makes it harder to assume a difference in the evidence reflects a difference in the facts.
It's just a practical reason, as in it's just not worth it to still try to punish people for lesser crimes commited decades ago. There's a large chance of errors and it's not really worth anyone's time. Serious crimes generally have no statue of limitations.
Cough cough trumps “sexual assault” in a clothing store 30 years ago…he was found guilty without any evidence other than a woman claimed he did it. Of course it was a civil case so the burden of proof is very loose.
I get this but what if that person admits they did help someone?
Pretend someone claimed they helped YOU commit a murder decades ago. Would you be able to produce an alibi for that specific day? Any other evidence would be gone at this point, so it's your word against theirs.
The statute is to protect the innocent. This means that sometimes guilty people go free, even in obvious cases. But that's the balance you have to strike in a justice system.
I would go further than that even!
I'd say the statute isn't to protect the innocent or the guilty, but rather to protect each and every individual's right to due process.
Even guilty people are protected from unreasonable litigation because of statutes of limitation.
John Oliver did a whole thing on false confessions which I suggest you check out.
In your hypothetical case, the cops could say to someone who had been detained for hours words to the effect of "look, just say you were with him on the night, and you'll be back in your own bed before you know it, no big deal", and a person who has been up all night in a police interrogation room might crack and think "you know what? Even though I didn't help my friend cover up a murder, this cop is saying me saying if I did it's no big deal, and I want to go home, so I'll just admit it and sort it all out later"
So you saying "I did help someone" doesn't mean much, but saying "I did help someone" followed by text messages and the receipt for a shovel does mean much.
Confessions, particularly those made under duress, don't hold a huge amount of weight in court.
People say stupid things all the time for attention.
It's also surprisingly easy for the police to coerce someone to confess to a crime they didn't commit under pressure. Eventually people will crack and say they did it just to get out of that room.
Generally you need more hard evidence of a crime.
You may have written your reply before my edit.
But here it is:
Oh, and we dont imprison people just because they admit to something. We still have to properly prove they did it. If we did just go "well they said they did it" you would absolutely have people being coerced into admitting to crimes they didn't do to let the actual criminals go.
Yep. The CIA published their whole breakdown of how their torture program worked: it didn't ever get real information. People will admit to anything to stop torture. There was that guy who was beaten into "confessing" to killing his very much alive father.
Admissions mean nothing unless they’re done under oath in court. Even those done under interrogation can be argued that they were false admissions or coerced.
But someone saying “oh yea I helped kill a guy 20 years ago” can easily be undone by then saying “I was just joking/lying”
There is no federal statute of limitations on murder in the US. Provided it's not classified as terrorism or a child was involved as a victim, admission probably wouldn't result in much without corroborating evidence.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s. (wikipedia)
Imagine if you got accused of murder 30 years ago, you are innocent. It would be extremely difficult for you to defend yourself.
There is no statute of limitations on murder and several other serious crimes
True, bad example.
Depends on location.
Japan is notorious for having one (at least before, afaik they changed it) and some people nearly escaping until the statute ran out.
I strongly believe in that quote, and it's depressing how many people will harshly disagree with me when I cite it.
And then they turn around and complain about too many people being in jail.
Those people believe that the only way that people learn is by being punished by others. This isn’t true and it’s a big part of what is broken in modern western society.
It's because they get emotional and let it cloud all reason.
If someone committed a crime 30+ years ago, what justice is being served now?
Also because in their head the guilty people are all hardcore criminals, but the percentage of heavy crime people in this are usually pretty low
Yeah, would rather have some people get away with crime than live in a society where Police/the government can legally blackmail and extort you for the rest of your life.
I get emotional and let it cloud all reason too
If a state builds a "justice system" that jails an innocent person, then not only do I want all police officers, all prosecutors and all judges involved to go to jail forever for abduction, I want the justice system and the society that built it torn down and rebuilt from scratch
I'd rather let a thousand men run free than chase after them. (Clancy W.)
Part of it is to keep the cops from holding off on charging someone so they can use it strategically later.
Like imagine you were caught drinking underage, and the cops let you off with a warning. Then twenty years later, you’re running for mayor and the cops don’t like your political platform, so they charge you with that underage drinking offense they chose not to pursue when it happened.
Similarly because people can improve themselves.
Using your example of underage drinking and then twenty years later running for mayor, they've clearly grown as a person to the point where that original crime no longer reflects them as a person and they've been improving their life and the community.
Should someone who can do a great deal of good for the community be punished for something years ago? That really becomes a question of the crime then, which is why different crimes have greater or softer statutes of limitations. Something like vandalism usually has something like 12 months as theirs where murder doesn't run out.
Ben Wyatt ice town!
The purpose and effect of statutes of limitations are to protect defendants. There are three reasons for their enactment:
A plaintiff with a valid cause of action can pursue it with reasonable diligence. By the time a stale claim is litigated, a defendant might have lost evidence necessary to disprove the claim.
Litigation of a long-dormant claim may result in more cruelty than justice.
Statutes of limitations set time limits for filing lawsuits, ensuring that claims are pursued while evidence is still reliable and preventing the indefinite threat of legal action. They aim to balance fairness to defendants with the need for justice by encouraging timely investigations and resolution of legal matters.
Everything in American jurisprudence is about harm, stopping it and remedying it.
There could be actions taken by the court or the law that would be an undue burden on a person, causing more harm than it remedies, so everything in the law is a balance between the harms it is supposedly remedying and the burden it puts on those affected by orders.
With respect to statutes of limitations, it is identifying that time is a mitigating factor to harm, especially certain kinds of harm. Basically if someone stole $1000 from me, that is much more harmful to me today if it happened last week vs. if it happened 10 years ago. Because the passage of time has reduced how much I feel that harm, it wouldn't be fair to punish someone for the harm I'm barely feeling from 10 years ago.
From a practical perspective, it also prevents many extortive uses of the law. Like someone cannot use potential charges to be filed as an extortion tactic if those charges have a clock.
Lastly, there's a timeliness element to evidence. Like if someone bringing charges against me has a mountain of evidence they've been sitting on for 10 years, but I only know that this is happening 2 months ago, a lot of the evidence that might exonerate me might have disappeared in the last 10 years, and would not be collectable in the previous two months.
The passage of time won't save whoever took my $1k.
I have a photo of someone that looks very much like you committing a robbery in 1997. Prove it wasn't you.
Can't do it? Exactly.
The longer ago something happened the harder it is to prove you didn't do it, even if you didn't, so it's often assumed after a while that you didn't to stop people getting convicted of old crimes they didn't do
I was born in 2005
The law is designed toward to err toward letting too many people go free rather than convicting innocent people.
Think of the scenario where an innocent person is falsely accused. Do you remember what you were doing on a random night 30 years ago? Can you provide witnesses to confirm it? How do you argue with a person that claims they saw you at the crime scene? How confident is anyone that any evidence produced - for or against you - is legit?
In Washington State, there is no statute of limitations for murder. If somebody is an accessory after the fact to murder (e.g. helping dispose of the body), then there's also no statute of limitations, although the punishment for being an accessory after the fact is less than for the actual murder.
So, it's unclear what show you were watching.
How would that work if the accused simply says they were defending themselves (or some other mitigating factor)? Wouldn't there need to be a trial to determine if it was murder or some lesser form of wrongful death?
I'm not sure if there's a statute of limitations on manslaughter or negligent homicide. I would look it up but I really don't want that question in my search history 😬
I looked it up. In Washington, felonies that result in death don't have a statute of limitation.
The rules are still the same -- the prosecution has to prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. If you're saying "I was forced to help. He said he'd kill me if I didn't," then that's something the prosecution is going to have to contend with.
Self-Defense is a mitigating circumstance, it mitigates sentencing, not guilt(you did the crime, you are guilty). Some Prosecutors choose not to pursue charges if the self-defense claims have merit as there is no reason to waste the time.
That’s not correct. Self-defense is an affirmative defense. So if you prove it, you did not in fact commit a crime.
Now, if you can’t prove the elements for self-defense, you could possibly point to mitigating circumstances at sentencing, despite failing to prove the affirmative defense.
Every state has some variations on what is required to prove self-defense. But, as a concept, I’m not aware of any state where self-defense is not sufficient to avoid a conviction.
I guess I was describing Imperfect Self Defense
Imperfect Self-Defense
Sometimes, a person may genuinely fear imminent physical harm that is not objectively reasonable. If that person uses force to defend themselves from the perceived threat, the legal situation is "imperfect self-defense."Imperfect self-defense does not excuse a person from the crime but can lessen the charges and penalties involved. But not every state recognizes imperfect self-defense as a reason to lessen a sentence.
For example, a student is studying at a coffee shop when a classmate arrives and walks toward the student. The classmate balls up his fist in anticipation of a friendly "fist-bump" greeting. The student genuinely fears that their classmate is preparing to punch them, even though this fear is unreasonable. In reaction to the perceived threat, the student flings his coffee cup at the classmate’s face and scrambles away. While the student’s claim of self-defense would not excuse any criminal charge for assault, it could reduce the severity of the charges. The student’s self-defense claim is imperfect because of the unreasonable nature of how he perceived a threat.
Do any states have a statute of limitation on murder? I thought certain heinous crimes like murder and possibly rape didn't have one anywhere in the US, just nonviolent crimes and maybe something like unintentional manslaughter
It forces police to act on crime now, instead of keeping crimes they know a person committed in their pocket and wait until they want to use that against the person. Police can’t use the threat of charging a person with a crime from long in the past to coerce them forever, since eventually if the police don’t charge that crime it stops being enforceable.
Notable the SOL doesn’t always start when the crime is committed but usually when it’s discovered. So in your cold case example the person might be able to be charged if it was only discovered recently that the person had destroyed evidence.
It might help to think about it for a crime less serious than murder. Let's say Bob was a thief in their twenties. He stole a couple of ladies jewelry etc. , but after a while got his act together and stopped stealing. Now 40 years later he's a retired grandfather. Does it really make sense to put him away for 5 years?
And on the flip side, let's say Bob has spent the last 40 years committing thefts. Does it really make sense to try and prosecute for the thefts that occurred 30-40 years ago when there will be much stronger evidence for more recent thefts and the earlier thefts may not significantly impact the sentence?
Let’s also say Bob was your boss that you don’t like or a local politician you disagree with or your neighbor you’re fighting over. You can’t go digging through their past to find any random crime they were never charged with and try to have them arrested for it. We’ve all made mistakes and this prevents everyone from living in constant fear.
Can't have too many statues. They attract birds!
It's original and main intention is to protect the defendant. If anyone can be charged with any crime years or even decades later, evidence could have been lost, eyewitness testimony becomes less reliable, or the defendant could have lost crucial evidence to prove their innocence. Depending on the crime, it may be difficult or even impossible to give a defendant a true "fair and reasonable" court proceeding or trial.
A statue is a piece of art. Like the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial.
A statute has limitations.
It’s a sculpture of limitations
Draw me like one of your statue limitations
There's a few reasons.
The first is that if you have a reason to persue someone you will do this reasonably quickly. Obviously, this one is problematic as sometimes evidence come to light later, and sometimes power dynamics mean people won't/can't go to the police for a long time.
The second is that the more time passes the harder it becomes for a defendent to make a case to defend themselves. Things like alibis or witnesses that would be able to prove innocence might be gone after decades. Of course this could be fixed by simply having more stringent conditions for a guilty verdict, as in some cases the evidence is incontrovertible.
The last one is that the goal of a justice system should be justice. And some believe that litigating a case decades after it happened is no longer about justice but about cruelty. I believe there is some merit to this, but it depends on the severity of the crime (for something like drug dealing or embezzlement I could be convinced, for murder or rape not so much).
I had this whole explanation of how if there are too many places for the pigeons to sit, the park would be covered in pigeon shit…and then I realized it was just a typo in the title.
In addition to the degradation of evidence point that others are making there are also a couple of other considerations.
At some point, for crimes other than the most serious crimes, we want people to be able to go on with their lives without the potential of a criminal conviction hanging over their heads. We can debate where exactly that line of severity would be, but you can imagine things like someone having photos of them using drugs out on the internet and worrying that at some point they'll be seen by the wrong people and lead to a criminal charge.
Relatedly, at some point, you lose most of the rationale for punishment. If this woman committed a crime in her 20s, she'd now be in her 70s. If she hasn't committed another major crime in the ensuing 50 years, she's not very likely to commit another crime, so we don't need to imprison her to protect society. She's likely also changed greatly as a person in the 50 years, so we don't need her to learn her lesson like we would have wanted to back in the 1970s. Then, maybe the victim's family will feel better that she's finally convicted, but likely they've made peace with what happened such that they're not going to feel greatly better that an accomplice after the fact is being jailed. Who benefits from society spending $100,000 on a trial and $50,000 per year to jail grandma for something that happened 50 years ago?
Part of the point of punishment is to prevent a person committing further crimes, either through rehabilitation, or confinement
If someone has actually gone a long time since their crime without reoffending, then the point of punishing them has gone away. This is more true of less serious crime, hence why the crimes like murder don’t have a statute of limitations.
A lot of jurisdictions don't have a fixed statute of limitations for certain crimes including those lesser than murder, or indeed at all. Instead they'll often decide on a case by case basis whether the whether a prosecution is in the public interest (or similar).
The general idea is that there should be a limit to the amount of time after an offence that it it is reasonable from a practical point of view to pursue or defend a prosecution, but as you say, this is an extremely debatable point where guilt is seems clear and victims are obvious.
The more time passes, the harder it is to defend against an accusation (evidence can be lost, witnesses forget what they saw, people die, etc).
Adding a time limit protects defendants from an unreasonable burden (except for the most extreme cases, like murder). It also ensures a timely resolution.
It's a matter of fairness...
If you're charged with a crime 20 years after the fact, but you didn't do it... How are you going to track down the witnesses & evidence you need for your case....
Whereas if you're charged a week after, it's far more likely that your lawyer can find those people with a little legwork.....
The further from the date of the crime you get, the greater the state's advantage in investigative ability gets....
To protect the innocent.
Suppose the cops have someone that says they saw you kill someone yesterday - but you're 100% innocent. It's not a problem for you: you have friends who will say exactly where you were, the restaurant you went to has security cameras, you have a credit card receipt for the restaurant, and so on. The murder case dies pretty quickly.
What if the police wait 10 years before they come for you? Now the evidence you have is a lot weaker. Your friends think that you hung out that day, and maybe you were at this restaurant. But you don't have your credit card info any more, and the security footage is gone, and a lot of other information that you could use for your defense is gone.
...
And confessions aren't foolproof. As an example, multiple people over the years have confessed to being "D B Cooper" - the news-story pseudonym of a man who hijacked an airplane in 1971. People confess to crimes for any number of reasons: mental health issues, fame or notoriety, to cover for other people, and for any number of other reasons - and that's without the fact that police somewhat routinely force or otherwise coerce confessions out of people.
Have I been wrong all these years or should the title say statute of limitation?
Depends on if this topic is about the general public being unable to climb to the top of Lady Liberty's torch or not.
Admission to a crime that happened 30 years ago isn't enough for the prosecution to file charges. They would need corroborating evidence, which has to withstand the test of time. A reliable eyewitness is hard to come by after 30 years. Unless the prosecution have these evidence, the lady could just back tracked and say she was just making shit up for TV.
Would suck to get falsely accused of sexual assault 50 years after the alleged event just because the other person got scammed out of their retirement fund and are looking for a free paycheck.
I did something stupid 20+ years ago as a teenager and made a prank phone call (no one was harmed, and there was no risk of anyone being anything but annoyed, but it wasted people's time). I've lived a decent life since then and there is no risk of reoffending. Would society benefit by spending resources to investigate and try me now?
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If I meet you today and then 20 years from now say your touched my wee wee, you pay me or you're fucked. Possibly literally when you go to jail and they touch your wee wee.
The trend to expand limitation and reduce the burden of proof is really dangerous.
We are basically to the point where if your kid is 45 and doing heroin and you say you'll dis-inherit them, you're going to jail.
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Ok sorry for not being from England.
I'm not either, son of an attorney in the US of A and deal with a lot of contract law myself.
Just saying a lawyer will giggle if you say statue and are dead serious
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We punish people for five reasons:
Deterrence. People do crimes because they think believe they'll get away with it, or don't care or think. Not because they're planning to get caught in 50 years when they can't be prosecuted.
Rehabilitation. If they've committed more crimes, then prosecute them for those instead. If not, sounds like they're already rehabilitated.
Incapacitation. Same reasoning as above.
Retribution. It's been ages. The victims have probably forgotten by now. (I exaggerate, of course, but this is true to an extent. You can check this by examining your own life.) Also, if the crime was done by a youth, then sending an OAP to prison might not feel quite right.
Denunciation. Nobody will think crimes are OK because of this.
It's pretty clear all of these reasons become less relevant with the passage of time,* to the point of becoming totally unconvincing for some of them.
* As do we all.
Other comments have mentioned but Three main ones:
it encourages others to come forward. Murder has no statute but ancillary crimes do. So maybe others involved will come forward eventually to help you catch the murderer once the statute has run out.
prevents extortion indefinitely. If you commit a crime and the cops or someone else knows it they can hold that over you forever. Or maybe you aren’t even aware and they spring charges on you decades later. It makes it very difficult to defend yourself.
prevents others that may want to damage your life for whatever reason from digging through your past until they find any random crime you committed however long ago you committed it and charging you with it. Have a disgruntled neighbor that finds out something you did as an 18 year old? They’ll have you arrested for it. Statutes stop that.
account for your actions on the night of july 17th 2003 and 6 PM.
if you have an alibi go ahead and track down the alibi witnesses
lss the longer it's been the more unreliable witness testimony is going to be and the harder it is to mount a defense
Several reasons. First, it can be hard to tell a consistent story about something that happened 30 years ago, let alone defend yourself in court. The more time passes, the vaguer the memories of everyone involved, the more likely an innocent person gets convicted.
Second, there are places in the world where it’s common to throw someone in jail and just never bring charges. You don’t have to prove someone’s guilt if you can leave them locked up for 40 years “awaiting trial.” Prosecutors have to give you the speedy trial you’re constitutionally entitled to if dicking around for years will let you walk free.
Third, it recognizes that people change. Imagine you stole something when you were 19 and someone realizes it was you when you’re 50. You’re a whole different person by then. You’ve had a whole lifetime to change, and there’s a very good chance you’re no danger to society. There’s no benefit to the community in making people spend a lifetime looking over their shoulder terrified of the cops because of a single mistake they made many decades ago.
Finally, it helps the truth come out eventually. Take the example of your cold case show. If that woman could be prosecuted, there’s no way she’d be talking today. And the victim might still be a missing person without the family getting closure. A lot of families have gotten a lot of closure and been able to locate the remains of loved ones because someone who was tangentially related to a murder was legally safe to talk about it 20 years later.
I'm not sure if English isn't OP's native language or they just mis-heard the words on tv, but the correct term is "Statute of Limitations," not "Statue Limitations."
In case English is not OP's primary language, here's a linguistic explanation of the difference.
"Statute" means "written law passed by a legislative body."
"Statue" refers to a carved (usually from stone) 3D representation of a person, eg a statue of the president.
"Statute Limitations" would also have a very different meaning than "Statute of Limitations."
The first means that the written law(s) has(have) limitations placed on its(their) reach. The second is the name of a specific written law about limitations. In this case it's the name of the law that limits the maximum length of time between when a crime is perpetrated and when it can be prosecuted.
Yes thanks for letting me know! I meant statute!
Gotcha, sorry for the unnecessary explanation then.
I TA'd a class on human abilities once. You know how, when you approach a yellow light, there's a stretch where it's hard to decide whether to stop or go? This is called the "dilemma zone." However, the prof's accent was so thick (and I didn't bother reading the textbook until the end) that I spent the entire semester thinking it was called the "lemon zone."
I think a big part of it is that if we didn’t, we’d easily end up with statues several miles tall and that would just create all kinds of problems.
Mostly it’s to prevent courts from being overwhelmed with stale cases. There is also the idea about faded memories and it being unfair when defending yourself, but apparently that doesn’t apply to murder when you would be defending yourself against the most serious of charges.
It is, or rather was, to protect defendants (who are, remember, presumed innocent) from getting railroaded in court. After a certain having a fair trial becomes very difficult, since the defendant cannot defend himself adequately years after a crime allegedly occurred. They might not even remember for sure whether they committed the crime or not. The prosecution says they have a witness that saw you at X location 15 years ago. How do you even argue against this?
Traditionally, the only crimes exempt were stuff like murder, fraud, and crimes against children because the nature of the offense means it can take years before anybody (or rather, any competent adult) realizes there was a crime at all.
I say was, however, because every year jurisdictions find an excuse to exempt more and more crimes from the statute of limitations because the crimes are serious, which is ironic because serious accusations carry the most serious consequences. Nowadays limitations are just there to protect politicians from having their enemies open up some 20 years old drug case while they’re running for office.
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There isn’t a statue of limitations in the UK, unless most of the US
The US has various statutes of limitation for different types of legal proceedings. The UK does too, but we call them limitation periods (or prescription periods in Scotland), and there are generally none for serious crimes.
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