...In 2008, the Utah legislature eliminated the statute of limitations altogether for rape, sexual assault and various other serious felonies, but that alone is not enough to explain why McGowan's allegations are not time-barred. That's because Utah Supreme Court and US Supreme Court decisions make clear that, for equitable and constitutional reasons, a dead case cannot be revived by lifting the statute of limitations later. In other words, McGowan's case would need to have survived to 2008 - rather than expire in 2001 - in order to gain the benefit of the removal of the statute of limitations.
But as it turns out, McGowan's case did not expire in 2001, and in fact was still alive in 2008.
That's because Utah, like a number of other states, has a provision that stops the clock on the statute of limitations whenever the potential defendant is out of the state. In legal terminology, stopping the clock is referred to as "tolling" the statute of limitations.
Here, what is sometimes called "absentee tolling" is key, because Weinstein was out of the state of Utah for most of the 1997-2008 period, since he presumably visited the state usually just for Sundance. That would probably amount to less than two weeks a year in state. While he was out of the state, the statute of limitations clock would have been paused.
As a result, the clock would count down very slowly from 1997 - most of the time it would be paused - and by 2008 there would still have been over three years left on the clock for authorities to prosecute the allegations. Even a few extra weeks here and there in-state would not be enough to run down the clock before 2008, when the time limitation was removed altogether...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/h ... li=BBnb7Kz
