The Act Today
The three year time limit described above – and the original exception to it – are still on the law books today, and are contained in sections 5 and 6 of the Act. (However grand juries were abolished in England in 1933, and now indictments need no longer be signed.) When in 2000 a British newspaper suggested that James Hewitt be prosecuted under the Treason Act 1351 for an alleged affair with Diana, Princess of Wales, it was pointed out that the mooted evidence fell outside the time limit.
Read more about this topic: Treason Act 1695
Famous quotes containing the words act and/or today:
“I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)