Does the statute of limitations apply in the case of Tara Reade? From this article https://www.businessinsider.com/former-biden-staffer-tara-reade-files-sexual-assault-complaint-2020-4 A woman who accused Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her when she worked for him in 1993 has filed a formal criminal complaint with the Washington, DC, police about the alleged incident, Business Insider has learned. [...] The statute of limitations for the alleged assault has passed. Is that really the case? As I understand it, the DC Sexual Abuse Statute of Limitations Amendment Act (passed January 23, 2019) removed the statute of limitations on sexual assault in Washington, D.C. and added a revival period. The most concise explanation I could find was here https://www.chaikinandsherman.com/blog/2019/january/dc-lawmakers-sign-sexual-abuse-amendment-act-to-/ 2-year revival period – In addition to extending the SOL for civil sex abuse claims, the Act also creates a 2-year “revival period” for claims that have already expired under the old statute of limitations. That means there is now a 2-year window in which victims can bring previously barred claims now allowed under the new statute of limitations.
No part of the D.C. Sexual Abuse Statute of Limitations Amendment Act of 2018 applies in the case of Tara Reade. The statue of limitations for criminal prosecution had already expired under the existing law and was not revived by the amendment. You are correct that there is a difference between the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution and civil suits. Phoog's answer cites information that is specifically about civil suits, and as it says, the statue of limitations for civil action has also expired. (I have not seen any reports of Reade filing a civil suit.) Tara Reade filed a criminal complaint with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department Reade also confirmed that the statute of limitations around the claims against Biden have passed. "I filed a police report for safety reasons only. All crim [sic] stats beyond limitations. Gratitude for all who have stood by me," Reade tweeted. ("JOE BIDEN SEXUAL ASSAULT ACCUSER TARA READE FILES CRIMINAL COMPLAINT", by Ewan Palmer, 4/11/20, newsweek.com) The web page Sexual Abuse Statute of Limitations Amendment Act of 2018 - Two Year Window Guide, on http://www.davidgrosso.org/, has a link to fact sheet summarizing the changes. There is no statute of limitations for criminal cases regarding sexual abuse committed after May 3, 2019. But sexual abuse crimes committed earlier whose statute of limitations had already expired by that date under the old law cannot be prosecuted. Section 4(a) shall apply to an offense committed before, on, or, after the effective date of this act, unless the statute of limitations for the offense expired before the effective date of this act. D.C. Law 22-311. Sexual Abuse Statute of Limitations Amendment Act of 2018., Sec. 5. (b) The previous statute of limitations seems to have been 15 or in some cases 10 years, so for a crime committed in 1993, the statue of limitations would have expired by 2019. The 2-year revival period only applies to civil suits: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a claim for the recovery of damages that would be time-barred under D.C. Official Code § 12-301 before the effective date of this act, but that would not be time-barred under section 3, is revived and, in that case, a cause of action may be commenced within 2 years after the effective date of this act. (Sec. 5. (a)(2))
[…] that prior to 2016, Germany had some outdated […] laws. […] The changes of November 9, 2016, BGBl. I 2460 ff, were brought forward under the impression of the 2015 NYE spike in reported sexual assaults. Particularly incidents around the Cologne train station/cathedral area were widely received. […] outdated rape laws. No, there was no change in the subsection concerning rape. Only editorial changes were made, now following the “new orthography”, less pompous wording/update to today’s parlance, and change in numbering. This meant that no did not mean no, […] If I ask you to “touch me down here” and you say “No” and I take your hand regardless and, without (physical) resistance from your side, place it at the respective location, then it’s sexual assault now, because you said “No”. Previously, it would have required force, e. g. grabbing your hand, to constitute a criminal offense. […] the victim would have to demonstrate injuries from self defence. […] Legally – what the law says – it is not necessary. You will not find a single reference in the law “the victim must demonstrate injuries”. However, successful persecution will be difficult in a he-said-she-said situation. If the court cannot be convinced, it will decide in dubio pro reo (i. e. acquit the accused). This is a general issue of criminal prosecution, though, but people get particularly agitated if it is concerning sexual self-determination. It is notable that a change in law does not bring improvements in that regard. […] a victim being too drunk to consent was not enough […] Previously, there was “in a defenseless situation”. Courts (not the police) interpreted this mostly restrictive. Being drunk does not automatically mean being defenseless (and arguably some people even like drunken sex/having sex while on drugs). Now there is an additional alternative “taking advantage of a person’s physical or psychological condition causing a significant impairment in forming or expressing his will, unless he gives his express consent”. This is a shift toward a subjective assessment of criminality. A sexually very experienced person is well-versed in his capability of giving consent to sexual interactions, whereas a sexually-inexperienced person exhibits “significant impairment” at an earlier level. It is yet to see how courts deal with that. […] When did Germany officially implement this law, […] The changes took effect the next day, on November 10, 2016. Technically, there’s no “implementation period”. However, on November 10, 2016, no lawyer could have definitely answered, for instance, the question “What is a legal definition of ‘against apparent wish’?”
The victims of these unconstitutional laws would likely not be able to recover any damages or refunds of their fees. Generally speaking, the only avenue to challenge fees imposed as a result of a criminal conviction for sodomy (or any other criminal law) is through a direct appeal of your conviction or sentence. The amount of time to raise that appeal is 30 days from the entry of the final judgment in most states, though it can be as low as 10 days in Virginia or as high as 90 days in Wisconsin. So by the time the court struck those laws down in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), the only people who could still raise an appeal would probably be those who had been convicted in the month or so before the court's decision. Even then, many of those people would likely still be unable to appeal. If they paid their fine, they generally forfeit the right to seek to vacate it. If they pleaded guilty, they probably would have waived their right to appeal on constitutional grounds. If they failed to raise the constitutional defense, they probably waived their right to raise it on appeal as well. So now the only people who can seek to vacate their fines are those you're dealing solely with the people who raised a constitutional defense, were convicted anyway, and had not yet paid their fines. Probably a very small universe. The other possibility would be through a civil suit under Section 1983, alleging that the government infringed on their rights by bringing that lawsuit. There are several possible ways to get hung up here, as well. First, under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), the courts can't allow a 1983 action based on a criminal conviction unless the conviction &quot;has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.&quot; Again, it would be too late to reverse the conviction, and habeas corpus would be unavailable for someone who had merely paid a fine. Perhaps one could obtain an expungement under a statutory procedure and characterize that as an executive order, but I don't know that that would be persuasive. Even if the plaintiff were able to address his conviction in one of those ways, the ongoing litigation over compulsory union fees makes me think he would probably remain unable to collect damages. In the union cases, the Supreme Court had previously explicitly allowed public-sector unions to impose mandatory union dues, and it then reversed course, finding those dues unconstitutional. Although the unions could no longer collect the dues, a question arose as to whether they had to refund the dues they had collected in the past. As far as I know, every court to consider the question has found that a &quot;good faith&quot; defense essentially immunized those unions from liability for damages based on the previous collection of dues. Analogizing here, the Supreme Court has previously explicitly permitted state anti-sodomy statutes in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), then reversed in Lawrence. In the meantime, many states collected fines from defendants convicted of sodomy in reliance on Bowers. So I suspect the courts would find that any municipal defendants in those cases would be eligible for the good-faith defense, and any individual defendants would be eligible for qualified immunity, as the illegality of their conduct was obviously not clearly established, given Bowers. So in short, I think any attempt to recoup those fees would fail.
Charged: yes. Another answer has mentioned incitement to riot in 18 USC 2101. There is also incitement to insurrection in 18 USC 2383. This carries with it upon conviction a prohibition on holding office under the United States, both in the federal law itself and also via Amendment 14 of the Constitution of the United States. There are laws under which charges could be brought, and there is certainly no impediment to bringing them after M. Trump's term of office ends. Bringing them before then raises questions of presidential immunity, but I strongly doubt that speaking at the start of a &quot;Save America March&quot; can be construed as an action in any official Presidental capacity. Convicted: only maybe. M. Trump's statements have to extend beyond what is protected by Amendment 1 and actually be incitement to insurrection. Although there is a strong case that seeking to kill the Vice President of the United States (&quot;Where's Mike Pence?&quot; as people shouted) and the Speaker of the House of Representatives (&quot;Tell Nancy we're coming for her!&quot;), seeking to obstruct the function of the Congress, and seeking to remove the Electoral College certificates, are indeed insurrection; as possibly is whatever the woman who refused to stop brandishing a knife at the door of the building was intending to do; reading the transcript of the whole speech given at the start of the &quot;Save America March&quot;, it is difficult to point to where M. Trump specifically incited any of those things. One can make circumstantial arguments, but the words actually uttered then and there merely encouraged marchers on a &quot;Save America March&quot; to march to the Capitol and cheer people on, &quot;demand&quot; that congresspeople &quot;do the right thing&quot;, and &quot;make your voices heard&quot;. This is in contrast to M. Trump's son and daughter in law who explicitly mention &quot;fight&quot;, &quot;fighter&quot;, and &quot;fighting&quot;, 7 times by Eric Trump by my count and 4 times by Lara Trump. And of course Rudy Giuliani not only said &quot;fight&quot; but also proposed &quot;trial by combat&quot;. In more potential criminal trouble than even them is lawyer and prominent Trump supporter, L. Lin Wood, who explicitly called, without equivocation, several times over a period of days, on Twitter and on Parler, for the Vice President of the United States to be executed by firing squad. There will certainly be mixed fortunes in the Trump family from this. Whilst there may be a case against Eric and Lara, and possibly Donald Sr.; Ivanka Trump did not speak beforehand that I know of, and is reported afterwards to have asked her father to go and speak to the mob about stopping, which she also did directly, albeit ineptly (&quot;American Patriots — any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful.&quot;), herself via Twitter for a short while.
RCW 26.50.060 governs the duration of protective orders. It depends on the reason for the order (and also note that there has been a change in the law, taking effect July 25 this year or next, depending on which section). The key provision is &quot;(6) The court order shall specify the date the order expires if any&quot;, which means that a perpetual order is possible. An order cannot be faked or altered, but a piece of paper purporting to be an order can be. You can obtain a copy of the actual order from the county courthouse. If you read para (2) in the statute, you will note that is says If a protection order restrains the respondent from contacting the respondent's minor children the restraint shall be for a fixed period not to exceed one year. This limitation is not applicable to orders for protection issued under chapter 26.09, *26.10, 26.26A, or 26.26B RCW. 26.09 is about dissolution and separation, suggesting that it is not necessarily faked. But yes, it is possible that the &quot;11&quot; was faked, and you can test that theory.
The general rule is that in the opening statement, the lawyer may describe what he expects the evidence and testimony to show: We will present Mr Smith, who will tell you that he saw the defendant miles away at the time of the crime But cannot make statements of fact as such. I don't see why this rule would be different for a pro se defendant. In a closing argument, as i understand the rule, the lawyer may and often will say things like "As witness X testified, there was no time to stop" but is not supposed to introduce new alleged facts not supported by the evidence. However, in a closing, a lawyer can and often does draw conclusions from facts supported by testimony. "My client was proved to have been in the next town 20 minutes earleri, so obviously he could not have committed the crime." Again, i don't see any reason why these rules would be different for someone acting pro se.
Yes. It will hold up in court. IMHO, there is no difference in the admissible portions of the two testimonies. "Few minutes" vs. "One hour" is immaterial The difference between "a few minutes" and "one hour" IMHO is immaterial given: the witness was unconscious and say, between 45 and 60 minutes would match both descriptions of the time interval. What other people saw and heard is hearsay Testimony about what other people saw and heard (with a few notable exceptions) is hearsay and not allowed into evidence because it is generally unreliable and not subject to cross-examination. So after the rejection of the hearsay portions, there is no difference in the admissible portions of the two versions. Qualification By "hold up in court," I mean it will be allowed as evidence. The weight and veracity of the testimony would be determined by the (judge or) jury after cross-examination.
This occurred in Hong Kong, so Hong Kong law applies here. Hong Kong law's definition of rape is explicitly male on female (nonconsensual male-male is covered by sodomy laws instead). It is impossible for her to be charged with rape. Assuming you were over 16 at the time, the only offence that could be possible is indecent assault. As far as I can tell, there is no statute of limitations. However, the chance of her being charged is basically zero.