A criminal case can stay open anywhere from a few weeks to indefinitely, depending on which clock you’re asking about. Before charges are filed, federal prosecutors generally have five years to bring most cases, while state deadlines run from one year for minor misdemeanors to ten or more for serious felonies. Once charges are filed, the federal Speedy Trial Act requires trial to begin within 70 days of indictment, and states impose their own post-charging deadlines. Both timelines have wide exceptions, and for capital offenses and a growing list of other serious crimes, no deadline applies at all.
The Deadline to File Charges
The statute of limitations is the deadline for the government to formally charge someone. Once it expires, prosecutors lose the case regardless of the evidence. The clock starts when the crime is committed, not when it’s discovered or when a suspect is identified.
Federal law sets a baseline of five years for most non-capital offenses.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3282 – Offenses Not Capital Congress has carved out longer windows for specific categories: certain fraud offenses carry a ten-year limit, and tax crimes generally have a six-year window. The five-year default covers the bulk of federal criminal law.
State deadlines vary widely. Misdemeanors often carry limits of one to three years, though some states allow up to five. Felony limits range from three years for lower-level offenses to ten years or more for serious violent crimes.2Justia. Criminal Statutes of Limitations: 50-State Survey The exact number depends on the crime’s severity and the state where it occurred.
When the Clock Pauses
The limitations period doesn’t always run continuously. Several doctrines can toll — pause — the countdown. When the tolling condition ends, the clock picks up where it left off rather than resetting.
Fleeing From Justice
Federal law states plainly that no statute of limitations extends to any person fleeing from justice.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3290 – Fugitives From Justice Most states have equivalent provisions. Someone who skips town or hides to avoid prosecution freezes the clock entirely. Fifteen years spent as a fugitive doesn’t count toward the five-year window.
Crimes Against Minors
Many jurisdictions toll the limitations period for offenses committed against children. The clock may not start running until the victim reaches the age of majority, typically 18, giving that person time to come forward without the deadline expiring while they’re still under the perpetrator’s influence. This tolling is especially common for sexual and physical abuse charges.
The Discovery Rule
For offenses designed to stay hidden, particularly financial fraud, some jurisdictions apply a discovery rule. The limitations period begins when the victim or authorities discover, or reasonably should have discovered, the crime. A sophisticated embezzlement scheme concealed for years wouldn’t expire before anyone realized what happened.
Crimes With No Deadline
Some crimes carry no statute of limitations at all. Federal law provides that an offense punishable by death may be charged “at any time without limitation.”4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3281 – Capital Offenses Murder and any other capital-eligible crime can be prosecuted decades later. Cold case homicides regularly produce charges twenty or thirty years after the fact when DNA or new forensic work identifies a suspect.
A growing number of states have also eliminated the limitations period for serious sex crimes against children, certain terrorism offenses that cause death or serious injury, and in some cases kidnapping. The trend over the past two decades has been to expand this list.
The Clock After Charges Are Filed
Once charges are formally filed, the question changes from whether the government can bring a case to how fast it must move to trial. Two overlapping sets of rules apply: the constitutional right to a speedy trial and statutory deadlines.
The Constitutional Right
The Sixth Amendment guarantees that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.”5Congress.gov. Amdt6.2.1 Overview of Right to a Speedy Trial The Constitution doesn’t put a number on “speedy.” Instead, the Supreme Court’s decision in Barker v. Wingo established a four-factor balancing test: courts weigh the length of the delay, the reason for it, whether the defendant asserted the right, and any prejudice from the wait.6Justia. Barker v Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972) No single factor decides the outcome. A year’s delay caused by the prosecution losing files is treated very differently from a year of delay the defense requested.
The Federal Speedy Trial Act
Because the constitutional standard is deliberately flexible, Congress passed the Speedy Trial Act to set concrete federal deadlines. Prosecutors must file an indictment or information within 30 days of arrest, and trial must begin within 70 days of the indictment or the defendant’s first court appearance, whichever comes later.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3161 – Time Limits and Exclusions State speedy trial laws range from about 60 days to several months, and some use a “reasonable time” standard that only triggers after a substantial delay.
Why 70 Days Rarely Means 70 Days
If you’ve seen the 70-day number and wondered why federal cases routinely last a year or more, the answer is excludable time. The Speedy Trial Act lists many delays that don’t count against the 70-day clock. The most significant exclusions include:
- Delay from the filing of any pretrial motion through the court’s ruling on it. A motion to suppress evidence that takes three months to brief and argue doesn’t count against the 70 days.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3161 – Time Limits and Exclusions
- Time spent determining whether the defendant is mentally competent to stand trial.
- The entire period of any interlocutory appeal, if either side appeals a pretrial ruling.
- Time the court spends considering a proposed plea agreement.
- Periods when an essential witness cannot be located or the defendant is absent.
- The full length of a deferred prosecution agreement, if the government and defendant agree to defer prosecution so the defendant can demonstrate good conduct.
Defense attorneys often file multiple pretrial motions, and each one pauses the clock. A complex federal case with motions to suppress, motions to dismiss, and expert evaluations can accumulate a year or more of excluded time while still sitting technically within the 70-day statutory window. This is the single biggest reason federal criminal cases take much longer than the headline number suggests.
When a Deadline Is Missed
If the Speedy Trial Act’s limits are violated, the remedy is dismissal. The defendant must move for dismissal, and the court then decides whether to dismiss with prejudice — permanently, so the case can never be refiled — or without prejudice, which allows the government to refile. The court weighs the seriousness of the offense, the cause of the delay, and whether reprosecution would undermine the speedy trial rules.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3162 – Sanctions A minor procedural lapse in a serious violent case is more likely to draw dismissal without prejudice than a pattern of government negligence in a misdemeanor.
For a violation of the constitutional speedy trial right, the Supreme Court held in Strunk v. United States that dismissal of the indictment is “the only possible remedy.”10Justia. Strunk v United States, 412 U.S. 434 (1973) There’s no option to reduce the sentence or credit the defendant for time waited. Courts rarely find constitutional violations, though, because the Barker balancing test gives the government significant flexibility, especially when the defendant didn’t object to delays as they happened.
One catch matters: the defendant has to raise the objection. Under the Speedy Trial Act, failing to move for dismissal before trial or before entering a guilty plea waives the right entirely.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3162 – Sanctions Sitting quietly through delays and raising the issue after conviction means the argument is gone.
Why Cases Drag On in Practice
Even when both sides want to move quickly, several practical realities push cases well past minimum timelines.
Defense attorneys often advise clients to waive speedy trial rights deliberately. Waiving the clock buys time to investigate the prosecution’s evidence, hire experts, locate witnesses, or negotiate a better plea deal. This is one of the most common reasons cases take longer than they theoretically should, and it’s driven by the defense, not by government foot-dragging.
Forensic evidence creates its own bottleneck. State crime labs across the country face backlogs that can stretch months or even years for DNA analysis, drug testing, and ballistics work. Low pay makes it hard to retain experienced analysts, and training replacements takes time. A case waiting on a lab report can’t move forward regardless of what the speedy trial clock says.
Court congestion is a persistent cause of delay in nearly every jurisdiction. Judges carry heavy caseloads, and scheduling conflicts among attorneys, witnesses, and courtrooms accumulate. Multi-defendant cases are especially slow because coordinating schedules and managing separate discovery obligations for each defendant compounds every delay.
What an Open Case Means for You
A criminal case that stays open for months or years has real consequences beyond the courtroom. Pending charges generally appear on employment background checks, so potential employers may see the charge even though no conviction exists. Reporting rules vary by state; some allow all pending charges to appear, and others restrict reporting of pending misdemeanors.
Federal law does impose some limits. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, records of arrest that didn’t lead to conviction generally can’t be reported after seven years.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports Pending charges still unresolved within that window remain fair game for background check companies, and convictions can be reported indefinitely.
The EEOC has issued guidance stating that an arrest alone doesn’t establish that someone committed a crime, and that blanket exclusions based on arrest records may violate federal anti-discrimination law. Employers using pending charges in hiring decisions are expected to conduct an individualized assessment considering the nature of the offense, how long ago it occurred, and the duties of the job.12EEOC. Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions In practice, many applicants never get the chance to explain, because a pending charge on a background report often ends the process before any individualized review happens.
Professional licenses are another pressure point. Boards in healthcare, law, education, and finance often require self-reporting of criminal charges within a set timeframe. An open criminal case can trigger a separate administrative investigation running on its own track, and the licensing consequences can be severe even if the criminal case ends in dismissal or acquittal. For professionals in licensed fields, the administrative case sometimes matters more than the criminal one.
And after a case finally closes, most states require a waiting period before you can petition to have the record sealed or expunged. That period typically runs from a few years for misdemeanors to seven years or more for felonies, so a case’s footprint on your record outlasts the case itself.