- A criminal case is started by someone issuing and filing a court attendance notice (known as a CAN).
- A statute of limitations is a law that sets the maximum amount of time between when a crime is committed and a charge laid.
- If you are charged with a crime after the statute of limitation period, the court doesn’t have the power to hear the matter and should dismiss your charge.
- In Australia, this is set out in the Crimes Act and means that someone can’t be charged with a summary Commonwealth offence more than a year after it happened.
- A summary Commonwealth offence has a maximum penalty of 6 months in prison (for a person) or 150 penalty units (for a company).
- There is no statute of limitations for other Commonwealth offences like murder or sexual assault.
- In NSW, we have a statute of limitations of 6 months for summary offences (set out in the Criminal Procedure Act).
- These include:
- Negligent driving
- Obscene exposure
- Goods in custody
- There is no statute of limitations for indictable offences, or:
- Indictable offences heard summarily in the Local Court
- Any offence involving someone’s death or a coronial inquest (in which case the time limit is 6 months from the end of the inquest or 2 years after the offence)
- These include:
- For traffic offences in NSW, if you are issued with a penalty notice fine (instead of a CAN) the statute of limitations is 12 months.
- This is set out in the Fines Act. Some examples of penalty notice offences rae:
- Drug possession
- Speeding fines
- Using a phone while driving
- Negligent driving
- Red light offences