Abolish statutes of limitations on all felonies

Abolish statutes of limitations on all felonies

A statute of limitations is a law that prevents the prosecution of a crime once a specified amount of time has passed.  For instance, if a rape was committed in 2020 in a jurisdiction that limited prosecutions for rape- by statute- to ten years after the crime (or possibly ten years after charges were first filed against a suspect), no charges could be filed after 2030.  Limitations statutes vary by jurisdiction and tend to scale up based on the seriousness of the crime.   Recently, accusations of child molestation and sexual assault by religious ministers have led to a number of proposals that law systems with statutes of limitations lift them and allow prosecutions to proceed irrespective of how long ago in the past an alleged crime occurred.

Bibliography

Becker, Gary.  “Rational Criminals and Profit-Maximizing Police.” http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Becker_Chapter/Becker_Chapter.html

Bibas, Stephanos.  “Rewarding Prosecutors for Performance.”  http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/osjcl/Articles/Volume6_2/Bibas-FinalPDF.pdf

Burgess, Ann. “Rape Trauma Syndrome.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 1974.  http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/AJP/2934/981.pdf

DNA Initiative. “DNA Technology Advancements.” http://www.dna.gov/solving-crimes/cold-cases/longandshort/technologyadvancements

Hopper, Jim. “Recovered Memories of Sexual abuse.”   http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/

Koehler, Jonathan. “The Psychology of Numbers In the Courtroom: How to Make DNA-Match Statistics Seem Impressive or Insufficient.”  http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~usclrev/pdf/074502.pdf

Kyodo News. “Families of murder victims launch group to abolish statute of limitations.”   9/10/2010  http://english.kyodonews.jp/podcast/story02/40234.html

Loftus, Elizabeth and Ketcham, Katherine.  “Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory On Trial.”  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dna/photos/eye/text_06.html

Niman, John. “Memory Enhancing Technology and Witness Testimony.”  7/15/2011 http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/15/memory-enhancing-technology-and-witness-testimony/

Pirius, Rebecca. “Criminal Statutes of Limitations.”  http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/statlmt.pdf

Powers, Martine. “Proposed law would eliminate statute of limitations on sex abuse cases.”  Boston.com, 9/27/2011.    http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/09/proposed-law-would-eliminate-statute-limitations-sex-abuse-cases/mD3dNgnuJSXAOhRNXB8a6O/index.html

Romano, Lois.  “Effect of Obama’s Candor Remains to Be Seen.”  Washington Post, 1/3/2007.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/02/AR2007010201359.html

South-Western College Economics Resource Center.  “Policy debate: is the death penalty an effective crime deterrent?”   http://www.swcollege.com/bef/policy_debates/death_penalty.html

US Justice Department. “Using DNA to solve crimes.” http://www.justice.gov/ag/dnapolicybook_solve_crimes.htm

Have a good for or against point on this topic? Share it with us!

Login or register in order to submit your arguments
Login
Share Points For or Against Image
Loading...