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The statute of limitations in Criminal Law (Master thesis)

Στραβοπόδης, Παναγιώτης-Μιχαήλ/ Stravopodis, Panagiotis-Michail/ Ποινικών και Εγκληματολογικών Επιστημών

The thesis investigates the statute of limitations as a legal process that extinguishes criminal liability and operates as a procedural bar to prosecution. Employing the dialectical method, the analysis treats limitation as an autonomous temporal factor that permeates the criminal phenomenon and its constituent elements. Its legal effect affirms the substantive nature of the process. The core inquiry begins with war crimes and crimes against humanity, offences whose nature demands the adoption of the principle of imprescriptibility. The thesis then turns to the classification of offences and borderline cases of them that challenge the interplay of articles 14, 17, 111 and 112 of the Greek Penal Code, particularly where the punishable act -distinct from its result- influences the commencement of the limitation period. Given the hybrid nature of the statute of limitations, the research necessarily engages with key provisions of the Greek Code of Criminal Procedure. Criminal law is realized only through criminal procedure, making procedural norms the structural framework of its application. Accordingly, the analysis includes the typology of judicial decisions, the final point at which limitation may be assessed in cassation, and its correlation with the principle of res judicata. This approach reflects the systematic integration of substantive and procedural law within a temporal framework. The statute of limitations is anchored in the historicity of the criminal act that may render the activation of the legal system futile if time, as an independent circumstance, has already fulfilled the function assigned to the system of criminal procedure.