Track

Status

Governing provision

There is no statute to quote, and that is the point. South Carolina is one of a small number of states that have never enacted a general criminal limitation period. The position is therefore proved by absence rather than by text, which makes it the weakest-sourced entry in this dataset and the one most in need of a positive authority before publication. 

What was verified. The chapter list of Title 17 (Criminal Procedures) was read in full: nineteen chapters — General Provisions; Defense of Indigents; Coroners and Medical Examiners; Autopsies and Inquest on the Dead; Extradition; Interstate Agreement on Detainers; Arrest, Process, Searches and Seizures; Bail and Recognizances; Habeas Corpus; Indictments; Venue; Intervention Programs; Pleading and Trial; Mentally Ill or Insane Defendants; Judgment and Execution; Uniform Post-Conviction Procedure Act; Post-Conviction DNA Testing and Preservation of Evidence; Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Devices; and Interception of Wire, Electronic, or Oral Communications. None concerns limitation of prosecutions. 

Chapter 1 was then read section by section, because a general provision would sit there if anywhere: § 17-1-10 (manner of prosecuting criminal action), § 17-1-20 (prosecuting officer not to accept fees), § 17-1-30 (rule of strict construction inapplicable), § 17-1-40 and § 17-1-45 (expungement), § 17-1-50 (interpreters), § 17-1-60 (publication of arrest and booking records) and § 17-1-65 (expungement of a handgun-possession conviction). No section imposes a time limit on commencing a prosecution. 

What was NOT verified. No South Carolina Supreme Court decision, Court of Appeals decision or Attorney General opinion stating the rule was retrieved from a free source, and none is cited here. The absence of a provision in one title is strong evidence, but it is not authority: a limitation could in principle sit in Title 16 for a particular offense, and Title 16 was not read in full for this page. 

The offenses themselves — § 16-3-655 (criminal sexual conduct with a minor) grades the conduct in three degrees: first degree where the actor engages in sexual battery with a victim under eleven, or with a victim under sixteen where the actor has a prior conviction (minimum twenty-five years to life); second degree where the victim is at least eleven and under fourteen, or is fourteen or fifteen and the actor is in a position of familial, custodial or official authority or is older, with a close-in-age exception (up to twenty years); and third degree, lewd or lascivious acts with a child under sixteen, with a similar age exception (up to fifteen years). Because no limitation period applies, each may be prosecuted at any time.

S.C. Code Title 17 (Criminal Procedures) — South Carolina Legislature, official code; the chapter list carries no limitation provision 

S.C. Code § 16-3-655 (criminal sexual conduct with a minor) — South Carolina Legislature, official code

The rule, in full — § 15-3-555(A): “An action to recover damages for injury to a person arising out of an act of sexual abuse or incest must be commenced within six years after the person becomes twenty-one years of age or within three years from the time of discovery by the person of the injury and the causal relationship between the injury and the sexual abuse or incest, whichever occurs later.” The ordinary deadline is the survivor’s twenty-seventh birthday. 

Parental immunity is abolished for these claims, retroactively — § 15-3-555(B): “Parental immunity is not a defense against claims based on sexual abuse or incest that occurred before, on, or after this section’s effective date.” This is the only retroactive provision in the section, and it reaches a defense rather than a limitation period. 

Twenty-seven is the shortest general civil deadline in this dataset. It applies equally to the perpetrator and to an institution — South Carolina draws no distinction of the kind Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota and Utah draw. Against that, the discovery limb has no outer cap: a survivor who first connects the injury to the abuse at fifty has three years from that point, and the section says “whichever occurs later”. 

The discovery limb is therefore doing almost all the work in practice, and it is narrower than it looks. It runs from discovery of “the injury and the causal relationship between the injury and the sexual abuse or incest” — not from discovery of the abuse. A survivor who always remembered the abuse but did not connect her adult difficulties to it has an argument; a survivor who understood the connection in her twenties does not. 

What it displaces — § 15-3-530(5) sets three years for “an action for assault, battery, or any injury to the person or rights of another”, and § 15-3-535 measures that from when the person “knew or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known that he had a cause of action”. § 15-3-40 tolls for minority but caps the extension at “one year after the disability ceases”, so without § 15-3-555 a survivor would face a deadline at nineteen.

S.C. Code § 15-3-555 — South Carolina Legislature, official code (Title 15, Chapter 3)

Chapter 3 of Title 15 was read in full — Article 1 (General Provisions, §§ 15-3-20 to 15-3-150), Article 2 (Year 2000 Commerce Protection Act), Article 5 (Limitation of Civil Actions Other than for the Recovery of Real Property, §§ 15-3-510 to 15-3-600) and the remaining articles — and contains no revival provision for sexual abuse claims. 

Section 15-3-555 sets periods running forward and says nothing about claims already barred. Its only retroactive provision, subsection (B), abolishes parental immunity for abuse “that occurred before, on, or after this section’s effective date” — a defense, not a deadline. A claim already time-barred in 2001 gained nothing from it. 

No South Carolina appellate decision on the constitutionality of retroactive revival was located, and none is asserted. Because no window has ever been enacted, the question that produced Thompson v. Killary, Mitchell v. Roberts, Aurora Public Schools v. A.S., Dupuis, Ball, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. Doe and McKinney v. Goins has not arisen here. 

The tracker records the revival entry as “none” and points the revival field at the civil source document, which is the ordinary handling. That is right, and the absence was confirmed by reading the whole chapter rather than by inference from the cited section.

S.C. Code Title 15, Chapter 3 — South Carolina Legislature, official code