Year and a day rule

The year and a day rule has been a common traditional length of time for establishing differences in legal status. The phrase "year and a day rule" is most commonly associated with the former common law standard that death could not be legally attributed to acts or omissions that occurred more than a year and a day before the death.

The Rule and Homicide

In English common law, it was held that a death was conclusively presumed not to be murder (or any other homicide) if it occurred more than a year and one day since the act (or omission) that was alleged to have been its cause. The rule also applied to the offence of assisting with a suicide.^{[citation needed]}

The problems with the rule have to do the advancement of medicine. Life support technology can extend the interval between the murderous act and the subsequent death. Application of the year and a day rule prevented murder prosecutions, not because of the merits of the case, but because of the successful intervention of doctors in prolonging life. Additionally, advances in forensic medicine may assist the court to determine that an act was a cause of death even though it was carried out fairly far in the past.

England and Wales

The rule was abolished by the Law Reform (Year and a Day Rule) Act 1996. English law is now substantially revised such that if a specific act can be proved to be the cause of death, it can now potentially constitute murder regardless of the intervening time. The abolition of the rule does not relieve the prosecution of its obligation to prove, in cases of murder, that the accused intended to cause either death or serious injury.

The permission of the Attorney General is required for any prosecution in which it is alleged that the death occurred more than three years after the causative act, or when the offender has previously been convicted of an offence in connection with the death.

New Zealand

The rule still exists in New Zealand and is codified in the Crimes Act 1961.

United States

The rule's status in the United States is less clear: many states have abolished it completely, and in 2001 the Supreme Court held that a Tennessee court's retroactive abolition of the rule was constitutional (Rogers v. Tennessee).^¶40 However, its common law status has been successfully used by defendants to overturn convictions as recently as 2003: the Supreme Court of Wisconsin upheld the year and a day rule in the case before it, but simultaneously abolished the rule for any later cases, noting the modern circumstances of homicide cases, in which there is "the specter of a family's being forced to choose between terminating the use of a life-support system and allowing an accused to escape a murder charge" and the court's finding that it is "unjust to permit an assailant to escape punishment because of a convergence of modern medical advances and an archaic rule from the thirteenth century".^¶35

In California the Californian Penal Code No. 194 has transformed the year and a day rule into a three years and a day rule.

Where the rule is NOT applied to homicide

Jurisdictions where the Rule has never applied

The following countries are listed in the Report on the Year and a Day Rule in Homicide [The Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong, June 1997] with the observation that "the rule has never applied".

Austria

France

Germany

Greece

Italy

Poland

Scotland

It should be noted that the report also said "It was held in H.M. Advocate v Stewart that the Crown may be barred from proceeding with a trial if it would be oppressive for them to do so in view of the passage of time since the discovery of the offence.".

South Africa

Jurisdictions where the Rule has been abolished

England and Wales

See the main introduction above.

Hong Kong

The Rule was abolished "for all purposes" in Hong Kong by s.33 Offences Against the Person Ordinance (added by Ordinance No.32 of 2000) following the recommendation of the Law Commission of Hong Kong; the Commission did not consider it necessary to set a time limit beyond which prosecutions required the consent of the Secretary of Justice.

Other legal and quasi-legal uses of year and a day

• The period of a year and a day was a convenient period to represent a significant amount of time. Its use was generally as a jubilee or a permanence.^{[citation needed]}
• Historically in England, the period that a couple must be married for a spouse to have claim to a share of inheritable property.^{[citation needed]}
• In medieval Europe, a runaway serf became free after a year and a day.^{[citation needed]}
• When a judgment has been reversed, a fresh action may be lodged within a year and a day, regardless of the statute of limitations. U.S.^{[citation needed]}
• A year and a day is a minimum incarceration sentence for felonies in many jurisdictions, and is one of the main features distinguishing felonies from misdemeanors. In the United States, a common sentence length;^{[citation needed]} for example, computer cracker Adil Yahya Zakaria Shakour was sentenced to one year and one day. For some crimes, this is the minimum penalty, as traditionally in English-speaking, common law countries, misdemeanors may not entail a sentence of more than a year (hence, "eleven months and twenty-nine days") whereas felonies are traditionally punished by incarceration of over one year, hence "a year and a day." Furthermore, in many jurisdictions, prisoners are eligible for parole only if their sentences are longer than a year; by imposing a sentence of a year and a day, judges can offer defendants a chance at parole.^{[citation needed]}

References

• Criminal Law: Eighth Edition, Smith & Hogan, Butterworths, ISBN 0-406-08187-5
• Official text of the Law Reform (Year and a Day Rule) Act 1996 as amended and in force today within the United Kingdom, from the UK Statute Law Database
• Official text of the Law Reform (Year and a Day Rule) Act 1996 as originally enacted within the United Kingdom, from the UK Statute Law Database