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> These collectors were seen as criminals, but now we can see they are really saviours. An amnesty would stop them being frightened of prosecution,” he said. T
by 462436347 3y ago
> These collectors were seen as criminals, but now we can see they are really saviours. An amnesty would stop them being frightened of prosecution,” he said.
The UK is unusual in that it has no statute of limitations for most crimes besides "summary offenses" (equivalent to US misdemeanors): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitation_periods_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitation_periods_in_the_Unit...
- gonzo41 3y agoHe should give the tapes to the British museum out of spite. They BBC will never get the back and the British Museum doesn't care what crimes were committed as long as their collection grows.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoIs that unusual among all the countries of the world? Or is the US unusual for having a statute of limitations?
- vkou 3y agoMost countries have statues of limitations for criminal offenses. It makes sense - imagine trying to defend yourself against an case where the police has been sitting on evidence for 50 years, and anyone you could call in your defense is long-dead.
- ummonk 3y agoIt’s not clear to me why we should have a hard and fast statute of limitations for that reason instead of simply factoring it in when deciding whether the prosecution has proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
- least 3y agoHow much doubt must a juror sow into their mind in order for it to be a fair trial?
- vkou 3y agoThe same could be said for any bit of courtroom procedure. Why forbid a prosecutor from making an illegal inference, or entering illegal evidence, when you can just instruct the jury after-the-fact to disregard it? The jury doesn't just live in a vaccum. There are rules for what kind of evidence is admissible to them, and we don't just leave it to the jury to yolo it. Sometimes, those rules don't make 100% sense. That's the case with any set of rules (Especially ones surrounding legal procedure!). We set rules, because we think that they are a good idea most of the time. And most of the time, for most crimes, the tradeoff between trying a decades-old case, and of preventing the harassment of an innocent person over a decades-old-case leans towards the latter.
- rtpg 3y agoIn adversarial systems, the prosecution's objective isn't to reach a truth, but instead to fight to convict you. This incentivises dirty tricks, misrepresentation of facts, and ultimately the full force of state resources looking at putting you behind bars. And during this whole process you are often locked up anyways for this process, independent of actual guilt. In that model and imbalance of resources, having statue of limitations in place alleviates the need for defendents to, for example, keep records of their actions and reasoning for 30+ years. How would you navigate being charged for tax evasion from 35 years ago, for example? EDIT: to be clear, I don't think this is necessarily a precise defense of statuetes of limitations specifically, just a "well they're not a bad idea" sort of defense