DATELINE to Examine Statutes of Limitations in Sexual Assault Cases

NBC's DATELINE will present a special report examining statutes of limitations in sexual assault cases, airing tonight at 9 p.m. ET. The episode is reported by correspondent Blayne Alexander.

Dana Beatty survived a rape that took decades to solve. After 34 years, authorities were finally able to identify the masked intruder who pressed a knife to her neck, wrapped her face in tape, lashed her to a bed and assaulted her for hours on Aug. 1, 1989. DNA evidence pointed to a local doctor who turned out to be someone Beatty knew — the husband of her best friend.

But Beatty's assailant couldn't be charged with rape. Authorities told her that the statute of limitations for the crime — which was six years in Ohio at the time of the assault — had long since run out, and a 2015 update to the state's statute didn't revive the case.

'Disbelief' is how Beatty, 67, described her reaction to the development.

'I do not understand why there would even be a statute of limitations,' she told 'Dateline' in her first interview about the issue. 'I don't understand what the value in that is.'

What happened to Beatty highlights an issue faced by adult survivors of sexual violence across the country: More than 30 states have statutes of limitations for the most serious charges of sexual assault — a crime that is generally described as rape but is prosecuted under different names in different states, according to data gathered this year by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, a nonprofit that tracks the issue and advocates for victims.

The data, which was verified and analyzed by NBC News, shows that time limits vary dramatically from state to state. Some states impose statutes of limitations of a decade or less with few exceptions, while others eliminate time limits entirely in some circumstances.

Calls for Change

Several legal experts and advocates believe statutes of limitations for all or many such types of assaults should be eliminated.

Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a former prosecutor who is a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, is alarmed by the dramatic variation across the country.

'It should cause anyone to have some concern about whether or not there would be accountability,' she said. 'If you have individuals who are able to perpetrate crimes in the 'right' location, where if you get past six years of looking over your shoulder there's no way you would be held accountable, that is quite alarming.'

To Stefan Turkheimer, vice president of public policy with RAINN, the variations can leave survivors agonizing over 'math problems' instead of seeking justice or dealing with the aftermath of a crime that has devastating consequences.

'They should be able to concentrate on their own healing rather than a race to the courthouse to see whether or not the doors will be locked for them,' he said. 'It is an unfair situation that when so many survivors come forward, they find that the time limit for justice has expired and that there's nothing that they can do and that this person that harmed them will continue to go free.'

Beatty immediately reported the rape to authorities, and investigators spent years trying to solve the crime. They even investigated a local police officer who early on was considered a potential suspect, according to Charlie Beaver, a former Cincinnati police detective.

But that officer had a 'perfect' alibi, Beaver said, and investigators were unable to identify her attacker.

Margaret Drew, an associate professor of law at the University of Massachusetts who specializes in gender violence, said it's not unusual for survivors to take years to report what happened to them. She said she was struck by the 'ambivalence' some legislatures display about rape survivors through statutes of limitations.

'We now know that sexual assault is a significant, life-changing event for the survivors and has serious psychological and physical consequences,' she said. 'Why doesn't everyone just agree to remove the statute of limitations?'

In interviews with NBC News, legal experts and advocates echoed that point. Some said there should be no time limits on any case involving nonconsensual sex; Hardaway said they should be eliminated for the most severe sexual assault charges, which can include the use of force or the threat of force or cases in which victims are incapacitated.

But Nathan Rouse, an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina, cautioned that statutes of limitations act as deadlines for authorities to act on allegations. That can be crucial, he said, because investigations and prosecutions have historically been 'sluggish, delayed or fully abandoned' for those victims.

'Discarding deadlines altogether is not a way to incentivize timely prosecutions of sexual assault cases,' he said.

Factoring in DNA Evidence

Some who support eliminating time limits pointed to DNA evidence as a crucial tool that has transformed investigations and prosecutions. DNA, they said, can blunt evidentiary issues like faded memories, unavailable witnesses or lost evidence.

Such issues — along with what Turkheimer described as 'court efficiency' — are the reasons statutes of limitations exist, they said. But no state has a time limit on the most serious crime, murder. And most states have eliminated them for certain sexual assault crimes involving children, according to Turkheimer.

Renee Williams, CEO of the National Center for Victims of Crime, said, 'I don't know why most states would not say, if there's DNA, it blows the statute of limitations out of the water' for sexual assault prosecutions.

While nearly a dozen states eliminate time limits if DNA evidence is used to identify a suspect, six offer limited extensions of five years or less. In Iowa, the statute of limitations for the most serious rape charge — first-degree sexual abuse — is 10 years. An extra three years can get added if DNA evidence comes into play.

In Montana, the statute of limitations for aggravated sexual intercourse without consent — that state's most serious rape charge — is five years, with a one-year DNA extension. The time limit is 10 years for the lesser crime of sexual intercourse without consent.

According to the Legislative Services Division of Montana's Legislature, lawmakers created the aggravated charge in 2017 but never addressed the crime's statute of limitations in committee hearings. It isn't clear why. But the time limit automatically became five years — the 'catchall' period for most felony crimes in the state, according to the division.

Seven other states and Washington, D.C., have statutes of limitations of 10 years or less and no DNA exceptions that extend the clock. In some states, these charges are misdemeanors or lower-level felonies. But in North Dakota, one of the most serious sex crimes has a time limit of seven years that can be paused only if the accused isn't a resident of the state.

Such 'tolling' provisions are common in state statutes. They pause the time limit in certain circumstances and often apply to all felony crimes.

Question of Justice, Not Math

In Ohio, authorities initially believed they could pursue a rape charge against the man who assaulted Beatty, according to Jeff Smallwood, a Cincinnati police detective. While the statute of limitations for the crime was just six years in 1989, it was extended to 20 years in 1999, then again to 25 years with an additional five-year extension for DNA evidence in 2015.

When Smallwood approached the prosecutor's office, he recalled, they believed that even though they were outside the 25-year window, the five-year DNA extension would kick in because of biological evidence recovered from Beatty's dress.

Using genetic genealogy, the investigators determined the DNA was that of Frederick Tanzer, a doctor who in 1989 was the husband of Beatty's best friend. Authorities were preparing to make an arrest, Smallwood said, when the prosecutor's office came back with bad news.

A misreading of the law meant that because the original statute of limitations had already run out, the DNA extension didn't apply.

'They say, 'We made a mistake,'' Smallwood recalled. ''We are unable to prosecute this case.''

A spokeswoman for the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office said the attorney who now leads the office wasn't involved in the process, so it's 'impossible' to know how it unfolded. Turkheimer said the apparent mistake illustrates how the complexities of statutes of limitations can undermine the fundamental premise of the justice system.

'The reality is these should be questions of justice, but they're often complicated math problems,' he said.

Because investigators in Ohio couldn't pursue a rape charge, they reached out to federal authorities for help. Using a coffee cup that Tanzer threw out, the investigators confirmed Tanzer's DNA was found on Beatty's dress. And they began examining other possible crimes that Tanzer could be charged with, including allegations that he'd drugged his ex-wife and had nonconsensual sex with her, federal prosecutors wrote in a pretrial detention filing.

But those, too, were ruled out because, at the time of the alleged assaults, there was an exemption in Ohio law that barred spouses from being prosecuted for rape. (In an interview with 'Dateline,' Tanzer declined to discuss the allegations.)

Such spousal exemptions once existed in every state, but few remain, Turkheimer said. Ohio eliminated its spousal rape exemption in 2024.

Last-Ditch Plan for Prosecution

Authorities next developed what Smallwood described as a last-ditch plan to prosecute Tanzer — a ruse that could catch him lying about the rape. Then, he could be prosecuted for that lie.

After having made up a story about how authorities were investigating a police officer suspected of raping Beatty and covering it up, Smallwood said, they planned to approach Tanzer not as a suspect, but as a witness. They'd ask whether he knew anything about the attack.

The tricky part, said Julie D. Garcia, a federal prosecutor in Ohio's Southern District, is that Tanzer could have refused.

'Everyone has a right to remain silent,' Garcia said. 'And he would have been well within his rights to say: 'I don't want to talk to you. Close the door.''

But Tanzer talked. And he lied.

He told them he didn't speak with Beatty on Aug. 1, 1989, nor did he go to her apartment or have sex with her, a recording of the interview shows. On Dec. 11, 2024, Tanzer was arrested on suspicion of making false statements to a federal agent, and he later pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison this year.

In the interview with 'Dateline,' he admitted raping Beatty and said he was 'working on the why.'

To Hardaway, the former prosecutor, authorities did the best they could in bringing the federal charges. But the case, she said, was the 'perfect example' of why statutes of limitations shouldn't apply to a crime like rape — especially when the suspect's identity is unknown.

'These types of crimes have an enormous impact on those who are not able to protect themselves,' she said. 'To be in a place where there isn't a recognition of that from the legislatures and a more uniform approach to sexual assault crimes, I think, is very telling about the priorities of our nation.'

For Beatty, eliminating statutes of limitations wouldn't just deliver the appropriate punishment to criminals, she said.

'To me, that would be relief,' she said. 'True relief.'