By RS Davis
Freedom Files
June 4, 2008
http://www.nolanchart.com/article3971.html
t the end of last month, lawmakers in Springfield, Illinois sent a bill to the governor's desk that would remove the statute of limitations on the crime of rape:
The House sent the governor legislation that would eliminate the statute of limitations for rape and four other sex crimes as long as victims report the crime within three years and the offender's DNA has been entered into a state database within 10 years of the assault. Such felonies must now be brought within three years.It's a good move. You should not be able to get out of such a heinous crime just because some time has passed. For instance, one dirtbag pedophile priest walked in 2004 after raping two boys, simply because the statute of limitations have expired.
Statutes of limitations are intended to prevent bad prosecutions. The theory is that memory is unreliable in the first place, but memory of something that happened ten years ago is practically worthless.
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Now, I remember every single person I have ever had sex with, and pretty well, too. If it had been coerced sex, I'd imagine my memory would be even better.
That said, you have to remember that if you are falsely accused of that crime, you probably have no idea what you were doing on some particular day ten years ago.
But good evidence is good evidence and bad evidence is bad evidence. I would hope that a defense attorney would communicate well enough that if the only evidence available is simply "he said/she said," there's no case to go on, anyway, ten years after the fact. If he can't get it thrown out altogether by the judge, then it behooves him to convince the jury that a ten year old memory is about as reliable as crepe-paper condom.
The reliability of memory has been a problem before. In the 1980's, they amended child sexual abuse statutes of limitations to start the clock ticking not when the crime occurred, but when it was discovered by the victim. This led to a boom in prosecutions based on crimes discovered during "hypnotic regression" therapy:
The changes in law had followed close on the heels of a fad among psychotherapists that had helped elicit from thousands of patients false memories of long-ago abuse at the hands of family members, teachers, or complete strangers. These patients would now be given legal encouragement to turn these memories into court cases, though after a lapse of decades it might be hard to prove either way whether Mom, Dad, and Aunt Bev had indeed engaged in multiple rape, Satanic ritual abuse, or midnight animal sacrifice in the town square...Again, though, you don't prevent prosecutions because some evidence might be bad - it's the jury's job to determine the quality of the evidence. And in the case of completely unreliable methods like specious "hypnotic regression," you treat them like courts treat polygraph results - evidence gathered in that way should not be admissable. Problem solved.
...As illustrated by the child abuse cases, one of the prime reasons for the disapproval of stale actions had always been the realization that their evidentiary basis will commonly be far less reliable than that of fresh actions. Aside from the drift and fading of memories, written records will often have been discarded, personal witnesses scattered or dead. Then, too, there's the nagging question of whether the original bad person or entity is still in some sense around to punish. Despite the law's eagerness to entertain notions of "successor liability," many of us will share Victor Hugo's doubts, as embodied in the character of Jean Valjean, as to whether the repentant 70-year-old is really the same person for purposes of punishment as the culpable 20-year-old he once was.
And I've never been very sympathetic to the claim that "I'm not the same man who committed those crimes. God has changed me." Well, if God has made you a better person, shouldn't you want to do penance for your past crimes? The victim, after all, is not the person she was before you assaulted her, either.
With the advent of DNA technologies, quality evidence is getting more and more abundant. DNA doesn't have memory lapses. DNA isn't biased. DNA doesn't hold back information that might exonerate you or point a finger in a different direction.
DNA evidence is also abundant, but often sits in evidence storage because prosecutors are prevented from filing charges on someone DNA proves is guilty.
In fact, before New York abolished its five year statute of limitations on rape in 1996, it was reported that "332 sex fiends fingered by DNA evidence will not be prosecuted because of New York's archaic statute of limitations on rape."
Many states are amending their statutes, and as of April 2007, The National Conference of State Legislatures reported:
Seven states, Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, and Virginia have no time limitation for the offense of rape. Nevada has no limitation for sexual assault if a written report has been filed with a law enforcement officer during the period of limitation. A number of states have no statute of limitations for prosecutions of the most serious, often Class A felonies, including rape crimes and regardless of the age of the victim. These include Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont.Its a great start, but there's still a ways to go. If this is an issue that concerns you, I'd recommend looking at this chart to see what the limitation is in your neck of the woods, and write to your representatives if it is lacking.
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