Under the "year and a day rule,"...?

Question

Under the "year and a day rule," which was followed at common law, but has now been abolished in many states, a person could not be charged with murder if the victim did not die within one year and one day after the alleged murderous act took place. True or false?

Answer 1

Historically, that was common but not universal.

The idea was that death must follow as a natural cause (result) of the actual harm done -- and in times when there was less science and more guesswork, the simplest way to deal with that was to say that if the death happened to far in the future, it was probably caused by something else.

Answer 2

I remember reading that somewhere a long time ago....I think it might have been in one of my law classes in high school. Yeah, it was true. If you beat someone to a bloody pulp, for example, and they were knocked unconscious but died 366 days later they couldn't be charged with murder.....

Heres some more info on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_and_a_day_rule