Editing Year and a day rule (section)

===United States===
*In 1891, the rule was upheld at the federal level in ''[[United States v. Ball]]''.<ref name=brady/>
*In 1987, the [[District of Columbia Court of Appeals]], the highest local court in [[Washington, DC]], rejected the year-and-a-day-rule in ''[[United States v. Jackson (1987)|United States v. Jackson]]''.<ref name=brady/><ref>{{cite court|litigants=[[United States v. Jackson (1987)|United States v. Jackson]]|vol=528|reporter=A.2d|opinion=1211|pinpoint=1213|court=D.C. App.|date=1987|quote=We also conclude that abrogation of the common law year and a day rule is overdue and properly accomplished by judicial opinion, and leave it to the legislature to determine if a time limitation on death should exist in the District of Columbia other than the limitations arising from the requirements of due process of law and of proof beyond a reasonable doubt of causation.|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8055326357893486910|access-date=November 15, 2015,}}</ref>
*In 2001, the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] held that a Tennessee court's retroactive abolition of the rule was constitutional in ''[[Rogers v. Tennessee]],'' since the [[Article One of the United States Constitution#Section 10: Limits on the States|''ex post facto'' clause]] only prohibits an ''ex post facto'' law from being passed, but does not prohibit a judicial organ from revising the [[common law]] in an ''ex post facto'' manner.<ref name=brady/>

The rule's common law status has been successfully used by defendants to overturn convictions as recently as 2003: the [[Supreme Court of Wisconsin]] upheld the year and a day rule in the case before it, but simultaneously abolished the rule for any later cases, noting the modern circumstances of homicide cases, in which there is "the specter of a family's being forced to choose between terminating the use of a life-support system and allowing an accused to escape a murder charge" and the court's finding that it is "unjust to permit an assailant to escape punishment because of a convergence of modern medical advances and an archaic rule from the thirteenth century".<ref>''State v. Picotte'', 2003 Wisc. 42, ¶ 35 (2003).  Summarized in {{cite journal | url =  http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Wisconsin_Lawyer&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=44850 | title = Supreme Court Digest: Homicide - Year-and-a-Day Rule Abrogated | journal = Wisconsin Lawyer | volume = 76 | issue = 7 |date=July 2003 | publisher = [[State Bar of Wisconsin]] | location = [[Madison, Wisconsin]] }}</ref>

In [[California]], the "year and a day" rule has been changed to a "three years and a day" rule.<ref name = "HKrept">''Report on the Year and a Day Rule in Homicide'', The Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong, June 1997.</ref>  If a death occurs more than three years and one day after the act alleged to have caused it (and the act was committed on or after 1 January 1997), there is "a [[rebuttable presumption]] that the killing was not criminal", but the prosecution may seek to overcome this presumption.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=194&lawCode=PEN|publisher=[[California Office of Legislative Counsel]]|title=California Penal Code § 194|access-date=22 March 2021|date=1 January 1997}}</ref> However, if the murder is committed by somebody who is serving a term of life imprisonment and is sentenced to state prison the year and a day rule applies instead.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&sectionNum=4500.|title=California Penal Code § 4500|publisher=[[California Office of Legislative Counsel]]|date=1986|access-date=22 March 2021}}</ref>

In 2014, the D.C. rule (as it existed in 1981) was one of the reasons given for why [[John Hinckley, Jr.|John Hinckley]], the attempted [[Assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan|assassin]] of President [[Ronald Reagan]], could not be prosecuted for the murder of [[James S. Brady]]. The [[medical examiner]] listed the [[cause of death]] for Brady as bullets fired 33 years earlier.<ref name=brady>{{cite news |author=Eugene Volokh |author-link=Eugene Volokh |title=Hinckley won't face murder charge in death of James Brady, prosecutors say |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/01/02/hinckley-wont-face-murder-charge-in-death-of-james-brady-prosecutors-say/ |newspaper=[[Washington Post]] |date=January 2, 2015 |access-date=2015-01-03 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.newsweek.com/will-john-hinckley-jr-face-murder-charges-delayed-death-james-brady-263716|journal=Newsweek|title=Will John Hinckley Jr. Face Murder Charges for the 'Delayed Death' of James Brady?|last=Wofford|first=Taylor|date=August 9, 2014|access-date=February 28, 2015}}</ref>