Track

Status

Governing provision

No limitation, ever, for the listed offenses — § 99-1-5(1)(a): “The passage of time shall never bar prosecution against any person for the offenses of murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, aggravated domestic violence, kidnapping, arson, burglary, forgery, counterfeiting, robbery, larceny, rape, embezzlement, obtaining money or property under false pretenses or by fraud, felonious abuse or battery of a child as described in Section 97-5-39, touching or handling a child for lustful purposes as described in Section 97-5-23, sexual battery of a child as described in Section 97-3-95(1)(c), (d) or (2), exploitation of children as described in Section 97-5-33, promoting prostitution under Section 97-29-51(2) when the person involved is a minor, felonious abuse of vulnerable persons, as described in Section 43-47-18, sexual battery as described in Section 97-3-95(1)(a) or (b) when the identity of the accused is later discovered due to results of DNA testing of biological evidence, or any human trafficking offense as described in Section 97-3-54.1(1)(a), (1)(b) or (1)(c), Section 97-3-54.2, or Section 97-3-54.3.” 

Note how sexual battery is split — the child limbs of the sexual battery statute, § 97-3-95(1)(c), (1)(d) and (2), are unlimited outright. The general limbs, § 97-3-95(1)(a) and (1)(b), are unlimited ONLY “when the identity of the accused is later discovered due to results of DNA testing of biological evidence.” That drafting is deliberate and it is the reason this classification needs a note. 

Two years for anything unlisted — § 99-1-5(2): “A person shall not be prosecuted for any other offense not listed in this section unless the prosecution for the offense is commenced within two (2) years after the commission thereof.” Two years is the shortest residual criminal period encountered anywhere in this review. 

A handful of named exceptions — § 99-1-5(1)(b): felonious abuse of vulnerable persons under § 43-47-19, five years. § 99-1-5(1)(c): larceny of timber, six years. § 99-1-5(1)(d): conspiracy takes the period of the underlying offense. § 99-1-5(1)(e): bribery, five years. § 99-1-5(1)(f): felonious assistance program fraud, ten years. 

Absconding — § 99-1-5(3): nothing in the section bars prosecution of a person who absconds or flees from justice, absents himself from the State or the jurisdiction, or so conducts himself that he cannot be found by the officers of the law or process cannot be served. 

Why the status is “Partly removed”: every offense that is specifically about children — felonious abuse or battery of a child, touching or handling a child for lustful purposes, sexual battery of a child under § 97-3-95(1)(c), (1)(d) and (2), exploitation of children, promoting prostitution of a minor, human trafficking — is in the unlimited list by name. But the general sexual battery limbs, § 97-3-95(1)(a) and (1)(b), are unlimited only where the accused is identified through DNA. A sixteen or seventeen-year-old victim charged under those limbs therefore falls to the two-year residual in § 99-1-5(2). Sexual battery is a hands-on contact offense, so a childhood contact offense carries a deadline, and the status cannot be “No deadline”.

Miss. Code Ann. § 99-1-5 — Justia (2025 Mississippi Code)

Three years, and that is all — § 15-1-49(1): “All actions for which no other period of limitation is prescribed shall be commenced within three (3) years next after the cause of such action accrued, and not after.” Mississippi has no child sexual abuse limitation statute at all. Claims run on the general tort period. 

A discovery rule, but only for latent injury or disease — § 15-1-49(2): “In actions for which no other period of limitation is prescribed and which involve latent injury or disease, the cause of action does not accrue until the plaintiff has discovered, or by reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury.” § 15-1-49(3): “The provisions of subsection (2) of this section shall apply to all pending and subsequently filed actions.” 

Minority tolling — § 15-1-59: “If any person entitled to bring any of the personal actions mentioned shall, at the time at which the cause of action accrued, be under the disability of infancy or unsoundness of mind, he may bring the actions within the times in this chapter respectively limited, after his disability shall be removed as provided by law.” For a survivor abused as a child, the three years therefore begins at majority, giving a practical deadline of the twenty-first birthday. 

Mississippi is the most restrictive civil position in this review by a wide margin. Twenty-one is the floor — earlier than Georgia’s twenty-three, Michigan’s twenty-eight, Kansas’s thirty-one. The only softening is the latent-injury discovery rule in § 15-1-49(2), which is not written for sexual abuse and would have to be argued into it. There is no institutional-liability provision, no certificate-of-merit regime, no age-based extension, and no separate section for childhood sexual abuse of the kind every other state in this review has.

Miss. Code § 15-1-49 — Justia (2025 Mississippi Code) 

Miss. Code § 15-1-59 — Justia (2025 Mississippi Code)

Neither § 15-1-49 nor § 15-1-59 contains any provision reviving claims barred under prior law. The only retroactivity clause in either section is § 15-1-49(3), which applies the latent-injury discovery rule in subsection (2) “to all pending and subsequently filed actions” — that extends a rule of accrual to pending cases; it does not revive anything already barred. 

On the criminal side, the 2026 amendment carries no applicability clause in the text read, and nothing in § 99-1-5 purports to reach offenses already time-barred. A criminal reach-back would in any event face the ex post facto prohibition in Stogner v. California, 539 U.S. 607 (2003). 

Mississippi is one of the few states in this review with no revival history at all — not a window that closed, not one struck down, not a reach-back clause. Combined with a civil deadline at twenty-one, that makes it the hardest jurisdiction in this batch for an adult survivor.

Miss. Code § 15-1-49 — Justia (2025 Mississippi Code)

no Mississippi row.