Track

Status

Governing provision

There is no statute to quote. Wyoming is one of a small number of jurisdictions — with South Carolina, and on the felony side West Virginia and Virginia — that have never enacted a general criminal limitation period. Every offense, including every childhood sexual offense, may be prosecuted at any time.

The position rests on case law rather than statutory text. Remmick v. State, 2012 WY 57, 275 P.3d 467, 470, is the decision that states the rule. It was not retrieved from a free source for this page, and nothing is stated from it beyond that proposition; it is cited because it is the authority the entry needs.

What was checked. Title 6 of the Wyoming Statutes — the Criminal Code — was searched page by page for any provision imposing a period on prosecutions. Two pages mention limitation and neither is on point: one concerns the destruction of records once appeal limitations have expired, the other concerns continuing prohibitions imposed at sentencing. No limitation provision was found.

What that check is and is not. The 210-page Title 6 document could not be read in full and is declared unread; the search described above is a keyword sweep, which under this review’s own standards is secondary validation and not a substitute for a sequential read. It is recorded because a negative result from a full-text sweep of the criminal title is worth having, not because it proves the absence.

The general structure supports the position — Wyo. Stat. § 6-1-101(b) provides that the Criminal Code “does not apply to crimes committed prior to the effective date of this act” and that “[p]rosecutions for a crime shall be governed by the law in effect on the date when the crime occurred.” That is a choice-of-law rule, not a limitation, and its presence in a chapter of general provisions where a limitation section would sit is itself mildly probative.

The rule, in full — § 1-3-105(b): “Notwithstanding subsection (a) of this section, a civil action based upon sexual assault as defined by W.S. 6-2-301(a)(v) against a minor may be brought within the later of: (i) Eight (8) years after the minor’s eighteenth birthday; or (ii) Three (3) years after the discovery.” The ordinary deadline is the survivor’s twenty-sixth birthday, and the discovery limb has no outer cap.

Note what the discovery limb does not say. It reads “three (3) years after the discovery” without specifying discovery of what — the abuse, the injury, or the causal connection between them. Every comparable provision in this dataset specifies: Virginia keys it to a clinician communicating the causal connection, New Mexico to disclosure to a licensed provider, Washington to discovery that the act caused the injury for which the claim is brought. Wyoming leaves it open, and how the courts have read it was not established.

It is defined by reference to a criminal definition — W.S. 6-2-301(a)(v) defines sexual assault for the purposes of the criminal code. A civil claim founded on conduct that falls outside that definition is outside subsection (b) altogether.

And subsection (a) was amended to make room for it — § 1-3-105(a)(v)(B) gives one year for “Assault or battery not including sexual assault”. The five words carved out of the general one-year rule are what keep a childhood sexual assault claim from expiring on the survivor’s nineteenth birthday.

What else the section provides — § 1-3-105(a)(iv)(C): four years for “An injury to the rights of the plaintiff, not arising on contract and not herein enumerated”. § 1-3-109: an action for relief not otherwise provided for, ten years.

The section makes no distinction by defendant. Unlike Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Tennessee, Wyoming applies the same period to the abuser and to an institution. Whether a negligent hiring or supervision claim is “based upon sexual assault” within subsection (b), or falls on the four-year general rule in subsection (a)(iv)(C), was not established.

Twenty-six is at the restrictive end — shorter than every state in this dataset except the territories’ two-year rules — but the uncapped discovery limb softens it considerably, and how much depends entirely on what “the discovery” means. That question is the single most consequential unknown on this page.

https://wyoleg.gov/statutes/compress/title01.pdf

Sections 1-3-103 to 1-3-109 were read in full and contain no revival provision. Section 1-3-105(b) sets two periods running forward and says nothing about claims already barred.

The section’s neighbors show the drafting conventions Wyoming uses when it wants to reach a class of claimant, and none is used here. Section 1-3-104 extends time for a person under legal disability in real property actions; § 1-3-107(a)(ii) gives an injured minor until the eighth birthday in professional negligence cases and § 1-3-107(b) applies that section “to all persons regardless of minority or other legal disability”. Section 1-3-105(b) borrows none of that machinery.

No Wyoming appellate decision on the constitutionality of retroactive revival was located, and none is asserted. Because no window has ever been enacted, the vested-rights question that produced Mitchell v. Roberts, Thompson v. Killary, Aurora Public Schools v. A.S., Dupuis and Ball 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. Wyoming is a plain case: a short age deadline, an uncapped discovery limb, and nothing reaching backwards.