The Arizona Supreme Court on May 22 agreed to consider whether statutes of limitations bar prosecution of rapes and most other serious crimes that happened before 1997 even if law enforcement unearths new DNA evidence tying a suspect to the crime.
The Supreme Court agreed without comment to review a Nov. 30 ruling in which a Tucson-based Court of Appeals panel said prosecutions in such cases were barred because the statute of limitations begins running in nearly all felony cases when a crime is committed and not when a suspect is identified.
The Court of Appeals said it was up to the Legislature, not the court, to strike an appropriate balance between the interests of the accused in defending against criminal charges when evidence is readily available and the state’s interest in prosecuting the cases.
There are exceptions for murder cases, where there is no time limit for bringing a case, and for sexual assaults that occurred after Jan. 1, 1997. That date is when a new state law took effect abolishing the statute of limitations for those crimes while a defendant is unknown.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by Pima County prosecutors in the case of Olin Gene Taylor.
Taylor was accused of breaking into a woman’s home in 1994 and forcing her to perform sex acts at knifepoint for more than two hours. Taylor was identified as a suspect in October 2005, through DNA testing.
Taylor would be released from custody if the case if dismissed. Court records show he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1998 for molesting an 8-year-old girl, but the conviction was overturned and he served five years after pleading no contest to attempted kidnapping.
The Supreme Court said it will hear oral arguments on a date to be set.
FYI
The case is Taylor vs. Cruikshank, CV-07-0005-PR.
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