What are the limitations of the null hypothesis?

Should the statute of limitations for rape be eliminated?

• The rationale is to solve the problem of rape cases never being prosecuted because rape kits are not processed before the statute of limitations expires. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/08/21/wendy_davis_on_texas_statute_of_limitations_for_sexual_assault_prosecutions.html Wendy Davis Proposes Lifting the Statute of Limitations for RapeBy http://www.slate.com/authors.amanda_marcotte.html Wendy Davis wants to lift her state's statute of limitations on sexual assault. Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images State Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor who rose to national fame last year by spearheading a fight against a draconian abortion bill,http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2014/08/davis-wants-to-eliminate-statute-of-limitations-for-rape-in-texas/ to highlight her ideas on how to fight sexual assault. Talking about her legislative efforts to process http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/23/bills-seek-to-tacklebacklogofuntestedrapekits.html in the state, Davis said she wanted to take the solution a step further. She proposed lifting the statute of limitations for sexual assault entirely, in no small part to make sure that rapists don't escape justice just because a rape kit lingered untested for so long that the window for prosecution closed. "While the bills I authored are helping to address the backlog of rape kits, the fact that we would throw survivors’ trauma and courage on a shelf for months or years without a second thought is offensive to them and to everything we say we stand for,” http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2014/08/davis-wants-to-eliminate-statute-of-limitations-for-rape-in-texas/. “But then to turn around and make survivors pay the price for our failure and neglect by denying them justice is almost criminal in itself.” Last week, http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/08/wendy-davis-wants-to-eliminate-statute-of-limitations-for-rape-sexual-battery.html/ about the statute of limitations on rape—which is currently 10 years in Texas—by campaigning with Lavinia Masters.http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/15/rape.kit.backlog/index.html when she was 13 years old in 1985, and a rape kit was administered but https://rainn.org/news-room/lavinias-story. In 2005, her unsolved case was reopened and, with new DNA testing technology, police were able to identify a suspect through a DNA match. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations had run out, so there was no prosecution. Masters' case is just as much about evolving technology as it is about the bureaucratic backlog of unprocessed rape kits, but with 16,000 untested kits to go through, the concern that some rapists will go free just because no one bothered to process the kits in time is a very serious one. http://www.cleveland.com/rape-kits/http://www.cleveland.com/rape-kits/http://www.cleveland.com/rape-kits/ of an effort to process old rape kits in Cleveland shows how much the statute of limitations matters in these cases. Ohio's statute of limitations on rape is twice as long as Texas' at 20 years, and having that extra time has helped a lot. The processing effort has led to more than 100 indictments, many of which go all the way back to the '90s. In one case, http://www.cleveland.com/rape-kits/race-for-justice/#incart_maj-story-1#incart_m-rpt-1#incart_m-rpt-2 before the 20th anniversary of the rape. Prosecutors went on a mad scramble to find the victim and get the paperwork together, going to a grand jury with a mere six hours left before the statute of limitations ran out. http://www.cleveland.com/rape-kits/index.ssf/2013/08/first_conviction_from_dna_cold.html. Obviously, in an ideal world, rape kits would be processed quickly, and no rape cases would sit around unsolved for 10 or 20 years because of bureaucratic morass. But as the Cleveland example shows, that is exactly what has been happening. Lifting or at least extending the statute of limitations is a necessary fix to deal with a problem that has been going on for far too long.

• Answer:

  As others have said here - the problem is not the statute of limitations (which in this case is already exceptionally long, 10 years), but one of the "backlog" of evidence processing that is alleged to be present.  The specific case, though, isn't even one of a backlog -- it's one of sheer incompetence on the part of the state in letting a kit sit for 20 years before reprocessing it. In matters such as that, I believe that we could (and perhaps should) allow for a tolling of the statute where there can be a clear demonstration that the victim is unreasonably harmed and that the evidence is sufficiently clear.  But that moves us into a gray area of effectively no statute of limitations, and such statutes are intended to allow people to eventually go back to their lives without a Sword of Damocles hanging over their head. Ultimately, the answer is better funding for our courts, prosecutors, and law enforcement agencies -- but that means higher taxes, something that at least here in WA seems rather impossible in this day and age.