February 11, 2019—For two years, Mark Foster had been representing a client charged in 2017 with the felony offense of taking indecent liberties with a child in 1992. Because there is no statute of limitations on felonies in the state of North Carolina, there is no prohibition against the State bringing charges against a defendant for crimes allegedly committed decades earlier. One of the elements of the offense of taking indecent liberties with a child is that the victim was under age 16 at the time. Through the use of a private investigator and careful examination of the evidence, Foster determined that the alleged victim had been 16 years old at the time of the purported crime, thus making the alleged conduct non-criminal. Rather than wait for trial to use this information, Foster and his client decided to take the chance of disclosing these findings to the D.A. The D.A.’s review of the evidence submitted by the defense resulted in the State dismissing the charge against Foster’s client before trial. He is now a free man.
