RE: How the fuck is there a statute of limitations for rape in New York?
October 17, 2016 at 4:41 pm
(October 17, 2016 at 1:46 pm)Losty Wrote: The killing or raping or whatever is still unlawful even if there's something that prevents charges from being brought up. I someone raped another person 50 years ago and cannot be brought up on charges because they're no longer living their actions were still unlawful. The same if someone raped someone 5 years ago and cannot be brought up on charges because the SoL has passed, the rape itself was still unlawful.
Interesting. The essence of an action being a "rape" is its being non-consensual. It's being a crime is secondary. The core idea is forced or coerced sex.
With murder, consent doesn't enter into it. There might not even be a consensual exception in the case of assisted suicide. It's being unlawful is at the core of the definition, since there are state sanctioned killings to which the word does not apply.
In the case of statutory limitations, an unlawful killing would still meet the definitional requirement of having been a murder if the killing was unlawful at the time it took place. Rules of prosecution wouldn't change that.
