First, the good news: apparently, the victim of that horrendous videotaped 2002 beating Matt Drudge exhumed last week (and which I blogged about as well) survived the attack, and is in good enough health to be pissed off about the fact that this video is being broadcast all over the Internet and local TV news. Her injuries included dizziness and some hearing loss, although it’s not clear from the KGO story whether she still has these problems now or if they were temporary following the attack.

Now for the bad news: the Oakland P.D. has been asleep at the switch for three years, and now, according to KRON account, the statute of limitations appears to have run. Or has it?

One of my recurring beefs with the MSM is that they frequently report legal conclusions but almost never cite the statutes upon which these conclusions are based. Thus, it’s up to us bloggers to reverse-engineer them as best we can. My inkling is that the basis of their conclusion is Section 801 of the California Penal Code, which imposes a three-year statute of limitations on all crimes punishable by less than eight years’ imprisonment. Aggravated battery, per Penal Code Section 243(d), would appear to be the applicable offense, and is punishable by up to four years’ imprisonment. However, that assumes all of the assailants have clean records, a dubious assumption to say the least. Let’s go out on a very short limb and assume that at least one of the thugs in the video has at least one prior felony conviction that is considered “violent” or “serious” for purposes of the Three Strikes Law. Penal Code Section 667(e)(1) provides that any felony committed by a second striker is punishable by twice the term otherwise provided for the charged offense, bringing the maximum sentence to eight years, and the statute of limitations, per Penal Code Section 800, to six years.

Then again, there probably are some first time offenders on the tape, for whom the statute of limitations really has passed. That’s unfortunate, but nothing a properly motivated Legislature couldn’t solve. They tried it before with sex offenders, only to be overruled in Stogner v. California, ___ U.S. ___ (2003), but that was a 5-4 decision, with “Republican” Sandra Day O’Connor among the offending five. If John Roberts is confirmed and proves to be all half of what he’s cracked up to be, this one should go 5-4 the other way.

UPDATE (8/31/05): Three days later, Drudge finally follows up on his own story and links to this. Apparently, the entire narration was false; the woman was not a “snitch” and didn’t rat out anybody for anything, nor did she even known the animals who attacked her. All she did was rebuff a pimp’s advances, and he got mad and turned his minions on her. It now appears that the incident occurred in October 2002, meaning that the statute of limitations hasn’t yet run out on anyone involved. If you recognize anyone in the video, call the Oakland P.D. at (510) 238-3426, pronto.