How Long Does the DA Have to File Charges in Wisconsin?

In Wisconsin, the district attorney generally has six years to file felony charges and three years to file misdemeanor charges, counted from the date of the offense. A handful of the most serious crimes, including first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree sexual assault, have no deadline at all. Several rules can shorten that math or extend it, so the calendar date is rarely the whole story.

Felony Deadlines

The default window for felony charges is six years from the date the crime took place.¹ The legislature has stretched that window for certain offenses it considers especially serious:

Second-degree reckless homicide: 15 years.¹
Second-degree and third-degree sexual assault: 10 years.¹
Sexual assault of a child, child exploitation, incest with a child, trafficking of a child, and over a dozen other specified child-victim offenses: charges can be filed until the victim turns 45.¹

Misdemeanor Deadlines

Misdemeanors carry a three-year deadline from the date of the offense.¹ That covers offenses like simple battery, disorderly conduct, resisting an officer, and theft of property worth less than $2,500. Once three years pass without charges, the state loses the ability to prosecute.

Crimes With No Time Limit

Wisconsin’s most serious offenses can be charged at any point, no matter how much time has passed:¹

First-degree intentional homicide
First-degree reckless homicide
Felony murder (a death caused during another violent felony)²
Second-degree intentional homicide
First-degree sexual assault
First-degree sexual assault of a child³
Repeated sexual assault of the same child (three or more acts against the same victim)

Attempts of these offenses also have no deadline.¹

When the Clock Starts

For most offenses, the statute of limitations starts running the moment the crime is committed. A theft on March 1 puts the clock at March 1.

One exception matters. When someone lawfully has possession of property and later misappropriates it, such as an employee skimming from a business account, the clock may not begin until the victim discovers the loss. Even then, prosecution has to start within one year of that discovery, and the extension cannot push the total window more than five years beyond the standard six-year felony deadline.¹ So the outer edge for this kind of theft is 11 years from the date of the offense.

What Counts as Filing Charges

The statute requires that a prosecution be “commenced” before the deadline runs, and that word has a specific meaning. A prosecution is commenced when any one of these happens: a warrant is issued, a summons is issued, a grand jury returns an indictment, or a criminal information is filed.¹ When a complaint is filed with a judge and a warrant or summons issues from it, that filing starts the criminal action.⁴

The state does not have to arrest you or bring you to trial before the deadline. It only has to file the paperwork that gets a warrant or summons issued. Someone who assumes the deadline has passed can be wrong if prosecutors quietly filed a complaint and got a warrant while time was still on the clock.

What Pauses the Clock

Two situations stop the countdown until they resolve.

The first is absence from the state. Time that the accused spends not openly living in Wisconsin does not count toward the deadline.¹ This keeps a person from running out the clock by moving away or hiding. The clock freezes while they are gone and picks back up when they return and live openly in the state. If the prosecution relies on this tolling rule, it has to prove the defendant was not a public resident, and a judge decides that question before trial.

The second is a prior pending prosecution for the same act. If the state started a prosecution that was later dismissed, the time it was pending does not count against the deadline. That gives prosecutors room to refile after a procedural setback without losing time.

The DNA Extension

Wisconsin has a targeted extension when DNA evidence identifies a suspect. If the state collects biological evidence, develops a DNA profile, and compares it against known profiles before the original deadline expires, prosecutors get an additional 12 months from the date of the probable identification to file charges, even if the regular deadline has since passed.¹

The catch: the DNA has to be collected and compared before the original deadline expires. If the regular window has already run out and only then does the state begin its DNA analysis, this extension does not apply. It buys time to act on DNA results, not time to start looking.

For the no-time-limit offenses like homicide and first-degree sexual assault, a related rule lets the state use a DNA match to prosecute related offenses within 12 months of identification, provided the DNA was collected within six years of the crime.⁵ Related offenses here mean crimes against the same victim, close in time, and part of the same course of conduct.

If Charges Come After the Deadline

The standard response to a late-filed charge is a pretrial motion to dismiss arguing that the state ran out of time. The analysis is rarely just a comparison of two dates. A court will look at when the crime was committed, when the prosecution was commenced, and whether any tolling applies, including any time the defendant spent living outside Wisconsin. The state carries the burden of proving the facts behind any tolling it relies on.

If the deadline is even a close question, raising it early through a motion to dismiss is far cheaper and cleaner than trying to unwind the case later.

1
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Code 939.74 – Time Limitations on Prosecutions
2
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Code 940.03 – Felony Murder
3
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Code 948.02 – Sexual Assault of a Child
4
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Code 968.02 – Complaint
5
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Code 939.74(2d) – Time Limitations on Prosecutions