Legal and Procedural Defense of Statute of Limitation, Essay Example

The procedural defense of statutes of limitation is another term for “affirmative defense proceedings” which refers to a defendant that takes the offense on a part of an indicated charge or allegated complaint against him/her and responds to the allegations (ALM, 2011).

A statute of limitation is a provision of a criminal law. Because, of the time of filing for some of the illegal commitments or illegal action are limited (ALM, 2011). A term ‘legal’ is defined as relating to the law.An authority body constitutes rules and principles for all parties to adhere to the discrepancies concerning them.A defendant may be prosecuted for the damages that have done to the plaintiff before statute of limitation principal has expired due to the date of the charge/complaint document have filed in the district court.

For example, according to the Michael Rowe (2011), he summarizeda 1964 case in Mississippi, a capital murder charged James Ford Seale in 2007 for kidnapping and murder two African American victims in the summer of 1964. Seale, the Klan member of KKK, was not charged on the murders on the first incitement because there were no witnesses nor there were no witnesses to take the stand against Seale. Since the incident, for 43 years no one mentioned of murders. Local media brought this cold case up to the national attention to the Federal Government. Then,United StatesincitedJames Ford Seale on capital charges.In conjunction with 1964 version of the capital nature of the kidnapping statutes, 18 U.S.C. § 3281 provided an unlimited statute of limitations for all federal indictments of capital offenses.James Ford Seale is imprisoned for life on all of the charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1201 (a) and (c) for two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping accorded to 1964 version capital murder of Mississippi State law(Rowe, 2011).

I find this a challenging decision on whether I should agree with the limits ofwhen crimes are prosecuted. Because, some cases involve (class-action) large monetary transactions, such ascapital taxes, political, and legal allegations tend to get away with statute of limitation substantive law. Whereas, less-of-importance (individual) cases involves psychological/physiologicalproblems and it was too late for the person to file a complaint. Thus, it cannot undo the statute of limitation law.However, I can agree with the notion that Homicide cases have no statute of limitation because it is difficult to find the concrete evidence and witnesses in time for the trial.

References

Search Legal Terms and Definitions. Retrieved July 3, 2011 from: http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1039

Rowe, M (2011) Contemporary Prosecutions of Civil Rights Era Crimes: An Argument Against Retroactive Application of Statute of Limitations Amendments. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 101(2), pp. 699-726. Retrieved July 3, 2011 from: ProQuest Criminal Justice Database.