18 U.S.C. § 3297
Section 3297 · Cases involving DNA evidence
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case United States v. Hagler (2012)
Most recently applied in United States v. Diosme Fernandez Hano (April 2019)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
In a case in which DNA testing implicates an identified person in the commission of a felony, no statute of limitations that would otherwise preclude prosecution of the offense shall preclude such prosecution until a period of time following the implication of the person by DNA testing has elapsed that is equal to the otherwise applicable limitation period.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Amendments
2006—Pub. L. 109–162 struck out “except for a felony offense under chapter 109A,” before “no statute of limitations”.
Effective Date
Pub. L. 108–405, title II, §204(c), Oct. 30, 2004, 118 Stat. 2271, provided that: “The amendments made by this section [enacting this section] shall apply to the prosecution of any offense committed before, on, or after the date of the enactment of this section [Oct. 30, 2004] if the applicable limitation period has not yet expired.”