How long the court has to file charges against you depends on the offense and the jurisdiction. Prosecutors, not judges, decide when to bring charges, and every crime carries a filing deadline called a statute of limitations.1United States Courts. Criminal Cases A low-level misdemeanor might have to be charged within a year. A serious federal fraud case might allow five or six. Murder usually has no deadline at all.
Federal Charging Deadlines
Federal law starts with a single default rule. For any non-capital federal offense, prosecutors have five years from the date of the crime to obtain an indictment or file a criminal information.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3282 – Offenses Not Capital That covers most federal crimes, including fraud, drug, and weapons offenses, unless Congress has set a different deadline for the specific charge.
The main exceptions run longer, not shorter:
- Capital offenses, meaning crimes punishable by death, have no deadline. An indictment can be returned at any time.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3281 – Capital Offenses
- Tax evasion, tax fraud, filing a false return, and willful failure to file carry a six-year deadline.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 6531 – Periods of Limitation on Criminal Prosecutions
- Terrorism offenses that caused death or created a foreseeable risk of death or serious bodily injury have no deadline.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3286 – Extension of Statute of Limitation for Certain Terrorism Offenses
- Federal sexual or physical abuse of a child under 18 can be charged during the child’s lifetime or within ten years of the offense, whichever is longer.
State Charging Deadlines
State deadlines follow the same basic structure but vary widely. The controlling factor is usually whether the offense is a misdemeanor or a felony, and within those, how the state grades severity.
For misdemeanors, most states fall between one and three years. A few allow as little as six months for the lowest-level offenses, and a few stretch to five or six years. Standard misdemeanor charges like petty theft, simple assault, or disorderly conduct typically cluster at one to two years.
Felony deadlines run longer. Three to six years is common for mid-level felonies such as burglary or robbery. Serious felonies, especially those involving fraud or financial crimes, often carry seven to ten years. Many states tier their felony classes and assign each level a different deadline, so the same state might allow three years for one class of felony and ten for another. A handful of states impose no deadline on any felony.
Because the rules turn on the statute for the specific offense in the specific state, the deadline that matters is the one in your jurisdiction, not a national average.
When the Clock Starts
For most crimes, the clock starts the day the offense was committed. A robbery on March 15 starts running on March 15.
The exception is the discovery rule, which applies to crimes that are hard to detect by their nature. Fraud and embezzlement are the standard examples. If an employee is siphoning money through a scheme designed to hide itself, starting the clock at the first transaction would reward concealment. Under the discovery rule, the deadline begins when the crime is discovered or when ordinary diligence would have discovered it. In an embezzlement that runs eight years before a forensic audit catches it, a five-year statute of limitations starts on the day of the audit, not the first missing dollar.
Events That Pause the Clock
Even after the clock starts, certain events can freeze it. Lawyers call this tolling. When the triggering condition ends, the countdown resumes from where it stopped.
Fleeing From Justice
The most common trigger is flight. Federal law provides that no statute of limitations extends to anyone fleeing from justice.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3290 – Fugitives From Justice State laws work the same way. If a seven-year deadline is running and a suspect flees after three years, returning a decade later leaves prosecutors the remaining four years to file. Waiting out the clock by leaving does not work.
Waiting for Foreign Evidence
In federal cases, prosecutors can ask a court to suspend the statute of limitations while they wait on evidence from another country. The court has to find that an official request has been made and that the evidence reasonably appears to be located abroad. Total suspension across all requests for a single offense cannot exceed three years.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3292 – Suspension of Limitations to Permit United States to Obtain Foreign Evidence
Other Triggers
Many states pause the clock while a suspect is a minor, resuming it when the person reaches adulthood. Some pause it during incarceration for another offense, or while a sealed indictment sits under seal. Federal tax crime rules exclude any time the accused spends outside the United States.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 6531 – Periods of Limitation on Criminal Prosecutions
Crimes With No Filing Deadline
Some offenses can be charged at any point, no matter how old. Murder is the most widely recognized example. In nearly every state and at the federal level, a murder charge can be filed decades after the killing. Cold case work depends on this, and DNA technology has produced prosecutions 30 or 40 years after the crime.
DNA has also produced its own extensions. Under federal law, when DNA testing implicates a specific person in a felony, prosecutors get an additional period equal to the original deadline, measured from the date of the DNA identification.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3282 – Offenses Not Capital Federal prosecutors can also indict an unknown person identified only by a DNA profile, which keeps the case alive when no name is attached to the evidence. Many states have adopted comparable DNA exceptions.
Federal terrorism offenses that caused or risked death or serious bodily injury have no deadline.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3286 – Extension of Statute of Limitation for Certain Terrorism Offenses Many states have also removed deadlines for severe sex offenses, particularly those involving child victims, part of a broader shift over the last two decades to extend or eliminate those limits.
What Happens If the Deadline Passes
An expired deadline does not stop charges from being filed on its own. The statute of limitations is an affirmative defense, which means the defendant has to raise it. A defendant who pleads guilty, or who goes through trial without ever raising the expired deadline, loses the right to use it. The Supreme Court confirmed in 2016 that the federal five-year deadline is not a jurisdictional rule that courts must enforce on their own; it becomes part of the case only when the defense raises it at or before trial.
If you think the statute of limitations has run on charges filed against you, the issue has to be raised early and explicitly. Waiting until appeal is too late, and no court will dismiss the case on its own initiative just because the deadline passed.
Constitutional Limits on Pre-Charge Delay
Even when the statute of limitations has not run, an unusually long delay between the crime and the charges can violate your constitutional rights. The protection comes from the Due Process Clause, not the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, which only applies after formal accusation.
The Supreme Court set the standard in United States v. Lovasco. Prosecutors do not violate due process just by taking time to investigate, even when the delay hurts the defense.8Justia U.S. Supreme Court. United States v. Lovasco, 431 U.S. 783 (1977) To win a due process challenge, a defendant generally has to show two things: real prejudice to the defense, such as lost witnesses or evidence, and an improper government reason for the delay, such as gaining a tactical edge. Fading memories alone are not enough. Courts treat this as a high bar because investigations legitimately take time.
A Different Clock After Charges Are Filed
Once charges are actually filed, a separate set of deadlines takes over. Under the federal Speedy Trial Act, an indictment must follow within 30 days of arrest, and trial must begin within 70 days of the indictment or first court appearance, whichever comes later, with several built-in exceptions.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3161 – Time Limits and Exclusions States have their own speedy trial rules, and the Sixth Amendment applies in every jurisdiction.
If you are asking why someone was arrested years after an alleged crime, the answer is the statute of limitations. If you are asking why a case is dragging on after arrest, that is the speedy trial rules. The two work on opposite sides of the same event.