What Is the Statute of Limitations for Sex Crimes? ARS 13-107

Which Sex Crimes Have No Statute of Limitations in Arizona?

A detective calling about something alleged to have happened in 2009. A grand jury subpoena over an accusation from a college relationship fifteen years ago. People assume old allegations simply expire , then learn that for most serious Arizona sex offenses, they never do.

Arizona’s general criminal deadlines , the felony classes, the misdemeanor rules, how the periods work across all charge types , are covered in our guide to the Arizona criminal statute of limitations. This article is the sex-crime-specific deep dive: which sexual offenses ARS 13-107 exempts from any time limit, how the seven-year rule actually operates for the rest, the DNA and absence tolling rules that keep old cases alive, and how the defense fights an allegation that is older than the evidence needed to answer it.

Any sexual offense that is a class 2 felony has no limitation period at all. ARS 13-107(A) provides that a prosecution for “any offense that is listed in chapter 14 or 35.1 of this title and that is a class 2 felony” may be commenced at any time. Chapter 14 is Arizona’s sexual offenses chapter; chapter 35.1 covers sexual exploitation of children. The subsection also names violent sexual assault under ARS 13-1423 and child sex trafficking under ARS 13-3212 directly, and it extends to attempts to commit any listed offense.

Based on the felony classifications in the statutes themselves, the no-limit category includes:

• Sexual assault , ARS 13-1406, a class 2 felony in every form. The state can file this charge ten, twenty, or forty years after the alleged act.
• Violent sexual assault , ARS 13-1423, expressly listed in 13-107(A).
• Sexual conduct with a minor under 15 , ARS 13-1405, a class 2 felony when the victim is under fifteen, and also class 2 when the accused was in a position of trust over a minor of any age.
• Molestation of a child , ARS 13-1410, class 2.
• Continuous sexual abuse of a child , ARS 13-1417, class 2.
• Sexual exploitation of a minor , ARS 13-3553 in chapter 35.1, class 2.
• Child sex trafficking , ARS 13-3212, expressly listed.

The same subsection removes the deadline for homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide resulting in death, misuse of public monies, felonies involving falsification of public records, and terrorism offenses under ARS 13-2308.01 and 13-2308.03 , but for sex offenses, the practical rule is simple: if the charge is a class 2 sexual felony, time alone will never bar it.

When Does the Statute of Limitations for Sex Crimes Start Running?

For sexual offenses below class 2, ARS 13-107(B) sets a seven-year limit for class 2 through class 6 felonies, one year for misdemeanors, and six months for petty offenses , but the trigger is what surprises people. The period runs from “actual discovery by the state or the political subdivision having jurisdiction of the offense or discovery by the state or the political subdivision that should have occurred with the exercise of reasonable diligence, whichever first occurs.”

That means the clock starts when law enforcement discovers (or reasonably should have discovered) the offense , not when the act allegedly happened. In sex cases, where disclosure to police often comes years after the alleged event, the seven-year window may not even begin until the first report is made. An allegation from 2015 that was first reported to police in 2024 can be timely filed in 2026.

Offenses in this seven-year category include, for example, sexual abuse under ARS 13-1404 (a class 5 felony, or class 3 when the victim is under fifteen) and sexual conduct with a minor aged 15 to 17 outside a position of trust (a class 6 felony). Under ARS 13-107(F), a class 6 felony keeps its seven-year period even if the court or prosecutor later designates it a misdemeanor.

Two more mechanics matter. Under subsection C, a prosecution is “commenced” when an indictment, information or complaint is filed , not when you are arrested or served. And under subsection G, if a timely-filed case is dismissed for any reason, the state gets six more months to refile even if the limitation period has since expired.

What Tolling Rules Can Stop the Clock on a Sex Crime Charge?

Even when a seven-year deadline applies, three rules in ARS 13-107 can pause or extend it , and prosecutors invoke all three in older sex cases.

• Absence from Arizona. Under subsection D, the period “does not run during any time when the accused is absent from the state or has no reasonably ascertainable place of abode within the state.” Years spent living in another state simply do not count against the deadline.
• Unknown identity , the DNA rule. Under subsection E, for a “serious offense” as defined in ARS 13-706, the period does not run “during any time when the identity of the person who commits the offense or offenses is unknown.” The 13-706 serious-offense list includes sexual assault, any dangerous crime against children, sexual conduct with a minor under fifteen, and child sex trafficking. This is the provision behind cold-case DNA prosecutions: if a sexual assault kit sat untested and the suspect was unidentified, the limitation clock was frozen the entire time, and a database hit years later can revive the case.
• Dismissal and refiling. Under subsection G, a timely case that gets dismissed can be refiled within six months of the dismissal becoming final , even if the limitation period expired in the meantime.

Why Do Decades-Old Sex Crime Allegations Still Get Charged in Arizona?

Put the pieces together and the pattern defense attorneys commonly see in Maricopa County makes sense. The most serious charges , sexual assault and the child sex offenses , have no deadline at all, so a first-time disclosure twenty years later can still become an indictment. For lesser felonies, the discovery trigger means the seven years often starts at the police report, not the alleged act. And cold-case units periodically re-run old sexual assault kits through DNA databases, using the identity-unknown tolling rule to file charges that look impossibly old.

These prosecutions typically begin quietly: a detective re-interviews the complainant, pulls whatever records still exist, and often arranges a recorded confrontation call in which the accuser raises the old allegation and asks for an apology, hoping to capture something a jury will hear as an admission. By the time the accused knows a case exists, the state has usually been building it for months. If that call or contact comes, say nothing of substance and get counsel involved immediately , the charge itself, if filed, will look like any other prosecution under statutes like ARS 13-1406 sexual assault, but the evidence behind it is decades thinner.

How Do You Defend Against a Stale Sex Crime Allegation?

The absence of a filing deadline is not the absence of a defense. When the state waits years to charge, it takes on a case with real structural weaknesses, and due process still requires a trial the defendant can meaningfully fight. Defense attorneys handling old-allegation cases in Arizona courts work several angles at once.

Making the delay itself a litigation issue

A prosecution can be timely under ARS 13-107 and still be attacked for the prejudice the delay caused. The passage of time destroys exactly the evidence an innocent person needs: the apartment where the encounter allegedly happened has been demolished, phone records and messages are gone under carrier retention policies, the alibi witness has died, the roommate who saw the couple together that night cannot be located. The defense documents every piece of exculpatory evidence the delay erased and puts that loss in front of the court and the jury , the state chose to prosecute a case in which the accused no longer has the tools to disprove the accusation, and the jury is entitled to weigh what can no longer be known.

Memory as the state’s weakest exhibit

In a decades-old case the central evidence is usually a memory that has been retold many times , to friends, family, therapists, and finally detectives. Accounts evolve across retellings, absorb detail from later conversations, and harden into certainty that outruns accuracy. Cross-examination maps every prior version of the story, and a memory and suggestibility expert can explain to the jury how post-event information reshapes honest recollection. The credibility toolkit for these cases is detailed in our guide to attacking credibility and motive in Phoenix sex crime cases.

Auditing the timeline and the tolling claims

When the state relies on the seven-year rule, the defense litigates the trigger and the tolling: When did law enforcement actually learn of the allegation? Should a reasonably diligent agency have discovered it earlier , for instance, from a prior report, a CPS file, or an earlier investigation that went nowhere? How much of the claimed out-of-state absence can the state actually prove? A limitation defense is won on records , school, employment, lease, and travel documentation that pins down where the accused lived and what the state knew, year by year.

Attacking the forensic gap

Old cases often come with degraded or incomplete physical evidence: partial DNA profiles, mixtures, chain-of-custody gaps across decades of storage, and retesting limits. In a cold-case DNA prosecution, the hit identifies a profile , it does not prove lack of consent, and it does not date the contact. The defense retains independent DNA analysts to probe what the science actually shows versus what the state’s summary implies.

What Happens If the State Files a Sex Crime Charge Too Late?

When a charge subject to the seven-year rule is filed outside the period, the defense raises the limitation bar by motion, and the litigation turns on dates: the discovery date, any periods of absence from Arizona, and , for serious offenses , any window when identity was genuinely unknown. Because a prosecution is commenced by filing under 13-107(C), the operative comparison is the filing date of the indictment or complaint against the properly computed deadline. If the court agrees the period expired, the charge is dismissed. The one caveat is subsection G: a dismissal of a timely-filed case hands the state a six-month refiling window, so a dismissal on other grounds early in a case is not always the end of it.

How Tamou Law Group Defends Old-Allegation Sex Cases

We treat the calendar as evidence. In every old-allegation case we build a year-by-year chronology , where our client lived, when the state first learned of the claim, what investigative steps were or were not taken , and test the state’s timeliness theory against it before trial ever becomes the question. In parallel, we move early to preserve what remains: subpoenas for records before retention windows close, defense investigation of witnesses while they can still be found, and independent forensic review of any surviving physical evidence.

Our team includes former prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and public defenders who have built and dismantled cold cases from both sides, and we defend the full range of allegations through our Phoenix sex crimes defense practice. Call 623-321-4699 for a confidential consultation about your specific situation.