Stogner v. California
The Supreme Court ruled that California could not prosecute a man for old child sex abuse allegations using a law passed after the original deadline for charging him had already expired.
The decision means that once a criminal case's time limit has fully run out, a legislature cannot later pass a law reopening it — doing so violates the Constitution's ban on retroactive criminal punishment.
How it got here: A trial court ruled the revival law unconstitutional, but California's Court of Appeal reversed based on a state supreme court precedent; Stogner sought Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
California passed a law letting prosecutors revive child sex abuse cases even after the original time limit for charging had expired, as long as a victim reported abuse and certain evidence requirements were met. Marion Stogner was indicted in 1998 for abuse allegedly committed between 1955 and 1973, decades after the original three-year deadline for prosecuting such crimes had already passed.
The question before the Court
Could California revive and prosecute a decades-old child sex abuse case after the original deadline for bringing charges had already passed?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that California could not revive Stogner's prosecution because doing so violated the Constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause. Once the original three-year deadline for charging him had expired, he was no longer legally subject to any punishment, and a later law newly making him punishable again counted as the kind of retroactive "aggravation" of a crime the Constitution forbids.
The Court found strong support in a long history of courts and commentators treating revival of dead prosecutions as unconstitutional, and it distinguished this case from laws that merely extend a still-running deadline before it expires, which remain permissible. The ruling reversed the California court's judgment and blocked Stogner's prosecution from proceeding.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People who benefited from an expired statute of limitations can rely on that protection permanently; states cannot later revive stale criminal charges against them. This affects how states design laws dealing with delayed reporting of crimes like child abuse, requiring them to act before existing deadlines lapse rather than after.
What changes now
The case is sent back to California courts, where Stogner's revived prosecution cannot proceed because the underlying statute of limitations had already expired before the revival law took effect. The ruling settles that states may not resurrect fully expired criminal cases, though it leaves undisturbed laws that extend limitations periods before they run out.
What this does not decide
The ruling does not affect laws that extend an unexpired statute of limitations before it runs out — only laws attempting to revive prosecutions after the original deadline has already passed. It also does not address Stogner's separate Due Process Clause argument.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Kennedy
“A law which does not alter the definition of the crime but only revives prosecution does not make the crime "greater than it was, when committed."”The dissent's core objection that reviving a stale case does not fit the ex post facto category the majority relied on.
Justice Kennedy argued that reviving a time-barred prosecution does not make a crime 'greater than it was when committed' because it changes nothing about the offense's definition or punishment — only the availability of a defense. He contended the majority misread Justice Chase's historical examples (the banishments of Clarendon and Atterbury), which he said involved actual recharacterization of conduct as more serious offenses, not merely removing a procedural bar. He would have upheld the statute, emphasizing the state's strong interest in prosecuting child abuse and finding no genuine reliance interest that revival disturbs.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court asked whether reviving an already time-barred prosecution counts as a forbidden retroactive law under the Ex Post Facto Clause, which bars laws that punish conduct in ways not allowed at the time it was committed.
- It relied on Justice Chase's centuries-old four categories of ex post facto laws from Calder v. Bull, focusing on the second category: laws that 'aggravate' a crime by making it greater than it was when committed.
- The Court read that category, per Chase's own alternative explanation, to include laws that inflict punishment on someone who, under the law existing when the new statute passed, was no longer subject to any punishment at all.
- Because Stogner's original limitations period had run, he was not legally punishable at all once it expired; the revival law newly exposed him to punishment, fitting Chase's second category.
- The Court also found broad historical support: courts, commentators, and legislators for over a century had treated revival of time-barred prosecutions as unconstitutional, reinforcing that this type of law is the kind of unfair retroactivity the Clause was meant to prevent.
- Weighing the fairness concerns — lost notice to preserve evidence, faded memories, and the unfairness of resurrecting a 'dead' prosecution — the Court concluded the law's retroactive revival of an expired case falls squarely within the constitutional prohibition.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Collins v. Youngblood (497 U.S. 37)
The Court leaned on this case's treatment of Calder's categories as the authoritative framework for ex post facto analysis.
Reaffirms Calder v. Bull (3 Dall. 386)
The Court applied and extended Justice Chase's historic four-category framework to cover revived time-barred prosecutions.