No statute of limitations? Or do “environmental crimes” rise to the level of murder?
...or the level of tax fraud?
His crime was smuggling the head home in 2007. He has plead guilty to that. Maximum sentence is 1 year in jail and $100 grand fine. He will likely get less but even so...
It appears he is charged with the importation of the mounted bear head and not with the shooting itself.
“Rodger Dale DeVries, 73, entered a guilty plea this week to one count of illegally importing polar-bear parts.”
and
“According to court documents, Mr. DeVries travelled to Nunavut in November, 2000, where he obtained a licence and polar-bear tag and paid an outfitter $12,500 to take him hunting.
After killing a bear, he had it mounted by a taxidermist in Calgary. Mr. DeVries then left it in storage with a friend there because he knew he couldn’t legally take it to the U.S.
In the summer of 2007, he went back to Calgary and moved the bear mount and its skull to a storage unit in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. From there, Mr. DeVries and his two grandchildren, both minors, took the trophy by boat to a tiny harbour in northern Michigan, then drove it home.”
Increasingly statutes of limitation are being altered to read “x number of years AFTER police become aware of a crime”. So if you do something wrong, and police never learn about it, you’re still on the hook because the limitation clock doesn’t start until after the police find out - rendering the statute of limitation basically null and void from a practical standpoint.