Reply #49: I was sexually abused as a child, but I'm also a scientist.

[Xithras]

We know, beyond question, that human memory is fairly unreliable in the beginning, and only becomes moreso as time goes on. That's why we have statutes of limitations on crimes, because human recollection becomes questionable, and even useless, as evidence after enough time has progressed.*

I'm against child molesters going free (mine died before he could ever be prosecuted), but our legal system favors the accused, which is as it should be. One innocent person in jail is one too many, or as Blackstone put it, "Better a thousand guilty men go free, than one innocent suffer".

I've heard a few suggestions in recent decades that modern technology may make statutes of limitations moot. The most common suggestion I've heard is to simply impose a cap on witness testimony, but to allow continued prosecutions based on hard physical evidence. Personally, I don't have a problem with that idea.

*There is, of course, a second purpose to statutes of limitations. Prison, in a just society, is supposed to be a deterrent and rehabilitative, and not punishment or retribution. If someone commits a crime, even a serious crime, and then spends the next 20-30 years living as a good member of society, the liberal concept of justice states that deterrence and rehabilitation are not needed for that individual. Pursuing people for crimes committed in a different part of their lives, when their whole way of looking at the world may have been different, is generally counterproductive for society.