Statutes of Limitations Found Clothed in Moral and Legal Fabrics of Society

A Los Angeles court last week told plaintiffs seeking damages from a priest they said had abused them as children that too much time had passed, and the best they could hope for was an apology. In the Northwest, two jurisdictions with different statutes recently caused a legal deadlock about whether former state prisoners whose testicles were bombarded with radiation many years ago were permitted to sue for damages. Although Oregon said no, Washington said yes.

The same doctrine hovers around Juanita Broaddrick’s allegation that, 21 years ago, Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her in an Arkansas hotel room. Broaddrick never pressed charges, and even if she wanted to, it would be too late now. So, along with the disturbing nature of her accusation, her charge and these other cases pose intriguing questions about how one establishes the truth of events that may have happened many years ago.

How can anyone muster a defense against something someone says happened 21 years ago?

“You can’t,” says Laurie L. Levenson, associate dean at Loyola Law School. “That’s why we have statutes of limitations.”

This assumption is not universally shared, but the notion of a time limit for bringing action is a fundamental premise of civil and criminal law in this country.

With the passage of time, memories dim and evidence grows stale. Statutes of limitations help the legal system to move efficiently, experts say. The principle is well-supported in moral tradition as well, theologians say, because at some ephemeral point, the social fabric suffers from too much dredging up of past transgressions.

‘Universally Respected, Not Very Well Liked’

Still, implicit in the notion of a time boundary for bringing action is the possibility that a perpetrator may get away with something terrible. Thus, says UCLA law professor Stephen Yazell, “The statute of limitations is like some people we all know: universally respected, but not very well liked by any of us.”

The statute of limitations is such a rock-solid component of jurisprudence in this country that its near sanctity is unquestioned, though its origin is somewhat murky. In the Middle Ages, when writing was scarce, Yazell notes, evidence tended not to outlast the life span of an individual, so “in a sense there was a kind of biological statute of limitations.” By the 19th century, Yazell adds, with the rise of commercial culture, “more transactions take place where it’s important to know when the time for challenge has run out. And you begin to get the rise of statutes of limitations.”

The classic example from that period, Yazell says, involves a doctrine in property law called adverse possession--the notion that, if one camps out on someone’s land long enough, and no challenge is raised, the land eventually reverts to the squatter.

In contrast to this country, many European and Latin American nations do impose statutes of limitations on homicide, says Mirjan Damaska, a professor at Yale Law School. European countries, he says, “have a much stronger sense that, for a combination of substantive and procedural reasons, after a certain period of time--usually 25 or 30 years--it does not make sense to prosecute someone.” But that standard has come into question, notably during the prosecution of alleged war criminals after World War II.

After A While, It’s Time to Move On

Statutes of limitations also are subject to change here. In recent years, in many jurisdictions, the laws have been extended for cases of child sexual abuse.

Father John Coleman, who holds a chair in social values at Loyola Marymount, describes statutes of limitations as tantamount to a “kind of moral intuition: For the good of the individual, as well as for the social fabric and trust, it might just be good to look the other way.”

And yet, Coleman adds, wrongdoers don’t necessarily escape moral obligations if they are saved by legal limitations. Morally, Coleman says, “one could make the case that one who perpetrates does not have a statute of limitations in terms of reparations.”

Presbyterian minister Brent Coffin, director of the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School, adds, “There is some profound wisdom in our tradition that you can’t bury moral failures. They need to be addressed, and there is a profoundly important role for truthfulness, forgiveness and healing. In some ways, recovering the past is the way to go forward.”

Fellow Harvard Divinity School professor Ralph B. Potter, who teaches a course called “Fame, Celebrity and Public Relations,” says public figures are often subject, in a way, to a higher standard.

Potter turned to the writings of Francois duc de La Rochefoucauld, the 17th-century French philosopher, who held that “what we do to hide our wrongdoings is almost always worse than the wrongdoings themselves.” And the very next maxim: “No matter how low we have sunk, we can always redeem ourselves.”