Track

Status

Governing provision

Maryland has no general limitation on felony prosecutions. Section 5-106 limits misdemeanor prosecutions only, and the serious child sexual abuse offenses are felonies, which may therefore be prosecuted at any time. That is the basis of the tracker’s entry and it is correct as far as it goes. 

The general misdemeanor rule — § 5-106(a): “Except as provided by this section, § 1-303 of the Environment Article, and § 8-1815 of the Natural Resources Article, a prosecution for a misdemeanor shall be instituted within 1 year after the offense was committed.” 

Penitentiary misdemeanors are unlimited — § 5-106(b): notwithstanding § 9-103(a)(3) of the Correctional Services Article or any other provision of the Code, if a statute provides that a misdemeanor is punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary or that a person is subject to this subsection, the State may institute a prosecution at any time. 

BUT — three years for fourth-degree sexual offenses against children — § 5-106(z): “A prosecution for a misdemeanor offense under § 3-308(c) or, if the victim was a minor at the time of the offense, § 3-308(b)(1) of the Criminal Law Article shall be instituted within 3 years after the offense was committed.” Section 3-308 of the Criminal Law Article is sexual offense in the fourth degree. 

Two other periods worth recording — § 5-106(hh): the limitation for sexual extortion under § 3-709 of the Criminal Law Article is five years. § 5-106(ii): the limitation for stalking under § 3-802 is ten years. 

Why this has been changed to “partly removed”: the felony position is genuinely unlimited and Maryland deserves credit for it. But § 5-106(z) singles out fourth-degree sexual offenses against minors and gives them three years from the act — not from majority, not from discovery. A survivor abused at ten is out of time at thirteen for that offense. The tracker’s own citation field already notes that § 5-106 “limits only MISDEMEANOR prosecutions (1 yr; some at any time)”; subsection (z) is the piece that turns that from a footnote into a classification.

Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-106 — Maryland General Assembly, official statute text

No time limit at all — § 5-117(b): “Except as provided under subsection (d) of this section and notwithstanding any time limitation under a statute of limitations, a statute of repose, the Maryland Tort Claims Act, the Local Government Tort Claims Act, or any other law, an action for damages arising out of a claim or claims of sexual abuse that occurred while the victim was a minor may be filed at any time.” The express override of the two Tort Claims Acts is what makes Maryland unusual: the elimination reaches public defendants as well as private ones. 

What counts — § 5-117(a): “sexual abuse” means any act involving an adult allowing or encouraging a child to engage in obscene or pornographic photography, films, poses or similar activity, or prostitution; incest; rape; sexual offense in any degree; or any other sexual conduct that is a crime. 

Damages are capped, and the cap was halved in 2025 — § 5-117(c): for injuries arising from a claim that would have been barred by a time limitation before 1 October 2023, noneconomic damages against a single defendant may not exceed $1,500,000 for an action filed on or before 31 May 2025, and $700,000 for an action filed on or after 1 June 2025. 

Public defendants are capped separately, and also halved — 2025 Md. Laws ch. 104 amended § 12-104(a) of the State Government Article so that where the State’s liability arises from claims of sexual abuse suffered as a minor, the limit is $890,000 for an action filed on or before 31 May 2025 and $400,000 for an action filed on or after 1 June 2025 that would have been barred before 1 October 2023. The same Act made parallel changes to § 5-518(b) and (c) for county boards of education and to § 4-105 of the Education Article on their insurance requirements. 

Attorney’s fees are capped — § 5-117(e): in any action filed on or after 1 June 2025, “counsel may not charge or receive fees that exceed: (1) 20% of the settlement; or (2) 25% of the judgment.” 

A reporting duty that is a data source — section 3 of 2025 Md. Laws ch. 104: “on or before January 31, 2027, and each January 31 thereafter, the Maryland Judiciary shall report the following information to the General Assembly … (1) the amount of each award made to a claimant under this Act; and (2) a summary of the sexual abuse claims underlying the award made to each claimant.” 

Maryland is the clearest example in the dataset of a state that eliminated the deadline and then, two years later, cut what a survivor can recover under it. The elimination is intact; the value of it was reduced by more than half for exactly the survivors it was designed for — those whose claims were already time-barred in 2023. A tracker that scores only “no deadline / deadline applies” will show no change at all between 2023 and 2025 in Maryland, which is misleading. The annual judiciary report from January 2027 will, for the first time anywhere in this dataset, produce official per-award data on revived child sexual abuse claims.

Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-117 — Maryland General Assembly, official statute text

How the revival works — Maryland did not open a dated window. It removed the limitation prospectively and retrospectively in the same provision, and then handled the revived claims by capping their damages rather than by time-limiting them. Section 5-117(c) is the tell: it fixes a separate, lower noneconomic cap for “injuries arising from a claim or claims that would have been barred by a time limitation before October 1, 2023.” 

Two conditions on revived claims — § 5-117(d), as amended in 2025: “(1) THIS SUBSECTION APPLIES ONLY TO ACTIONS for damages UNDER THIS SECTION that would have been barred by a time limitation before October 1, 2023. (2) AN ACTION may NOT be brought if the alleged victim of abuse is deceased at the commencement of the action. (3) AN ACTION AGAINST THE STATE OR A UNIT OF STATE GOVERNMENT MAY NOT BE FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2026.” (Capitals as in the enrolled chapter law, where they mark new language.) 

That third paragraph has already taken effect — 1 January 2026 was more than eight months before the date of this page. A survivor with a revived claim against the State of Maryland or a State unit can no longer file it. Claims against private defendants, and claims that were not time-barred before 1 October 2023, are unaffected. 

The constitutional challenge failed — Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. Doe (Md., 3 February 2025) upheld the 2023 Child Victims Act’s retroactive revival. That decision was not in the source folder and was not read for this page, so nothing is stated from it here beyond the fact of the holding. It is the decision the Supreme Court of Kentucky was expressly declined to be followed by in Thompson v. Killary. 

Maryland and Kentucky decided the same constitutional question within a year of each other and reached opposite answers, and each court’s reporter now flags the other. Maryland is the strongest counterweight in the dataset to the vested-rights line running through Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine and Utah. If CHILD USA ever needs a single pair of cases to show that this question is genuinely open, Thompson v. Killary and Archbishop of Washington v. Doe are that pair.

Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-117 — Maryland General Assembly, official statute text

the tracker carries “Maryland | RC Archbishop of Washington v. Doe | Md., Feb. 2025 | 2025 | Upheld the 2023 Child Victims Act’s retroactive revival. Revival remains open.”