## Facts

- Between 1955 and 1973, Marion Reynolds Stogner allegedly committed sex offenses against his minor daughters.
- When the alleged conduct occurred, California provided a three-year criminal statute of limitations for the relevant offenses.
- In 1993–1994, California enacted a special limitations provision (former Cal. Penal Code § 803(g)) permitting prosecution for certain child sex offenses after the prior limitations period had run if specified conditions were met, including initiation within one year of a victim’s report and independent corroboration of probable cause.
- The statute was later clarified to apply retroactively to offenses already time-barred when the statute was enacted.
- In 1998, after his daughters reported abuse during an investigation involving Stogner’s sons, a grand jury indicted Stogner for offenses allegedly committed decades earlier.
- Absent § 803(g), the prosecutions would have been barred because the original limitations period had long expired.

## Issues

1. Whether the Ex Post Facto Clause prohibits a state from retroactively extending a criminal statute of limitations and applying it to revive a prosecution that was already time-barred.
2. Whether California’s § 803(g), as applied to offenses for which the prior limitations period had expired before enactment, constitutes an unconstitutional ex post facto law.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court held, 5–4, that a law enacted after expiration of the previously applicable limitations period violates the Ex Post Facto Clause when applied to revive a time-barred prosecution.
- The Court ruled that applying § 803(g) to Stogner’s alleged offenses was unconstitutional because the prior limitations period had fully expired before the statute’s enactment.
- The Court treated revival of an expired limitations period as the kind of retroactive punishment barred by established ex post facto categories.
- The Court distinguished permissible extensions of unexpired limitations periods from unconstitutional revival of expired periods.
- Because the case was resolved on Ex Post Facto grounds, the Court did not decide the separate due process argument.

## Legal Principles

- A legislature may not retroactively revive a criminal prosecution after the applicable statute of limitations has fully expired; doing so violates the Ex Post Facto Clause.
- Extending a criminal statute of limitations before it expires is analytically distinct from reviving an expired limitations bar; the latter is constitutionally prohibited.
- For ex post facto analysis, removing a complete limitations bar after it has attached can function as retroactive imposition of criminal liability where the defendant was no longer subject to punishment under existing law.

## Conclusion

The Court invalidated California’s retroactive limitations statute as applied to revive charges for which the original limitations period had already expired, holding that the Ex Post Facto Clause forbids reopening time-barred criminal prosecutions even if the state sets new conditions for bringing the case.


Stogner v. California, 539 U.S. 607 (2003)