FEDERAL CRIMINAL LAWYERS

New Jersey How Long Can The Federal Government Investigate You? Lawyers

The federal government is currently investigating thousands of people across the United States for a wide variety of crimes. They have a considerable latitude to investigate these men and women. However, that latitude is not unlimited. They eventually have to either cease their investigation or file charges in most instances. Individuals who are under investigation need to know their rights and be familiar with the law in order to minimize the impact of such a traumatic event in their lives.

Stress of federal investigations

Federal investigations can put an individual under a considerable amount of stress and strain. Investigators can pry into practically every part of a person’s life. With a search warrant, they may ransack a person’s home and rifle through all of their belongings. All of a person’s digital applications are subject to an extensive search. Investigators can talk to a person’s family, friends, and work. They can go through bank records and recover the multitude of digital information that a person tried to delete from their hard drives.

They can jeopardize a target’s career and relationships. In some instances, federal investigators want to put pressure on a person to confess to a crime or to testify against another individual. In order to do this, they may take actions that are legally or morally questionable. All of these factors can combine to make a federal investigation a significant detriment to a person’s life. The stress is partially the point of the investigation. Federal investigators want a confession and a plea deal. They want to be able to convict the individual involved and have that person testify to any crimes that they may have known about from other people.

Possible time limits

The main way that an investigation ends is when it runs up against the statute of limitations. A statute of limitations is a law stating that a person cannot be charged with a crime after a certain period elapses following the commission of the crime. For instance, if a person is investigated for bank robbery and the statute of limitations is five years, that person cannot be charged six years after the crime has occurred. Only certain serious crimes, such as murder and terrorism, do not have statutes of limitations in any system.

These statutes were put in place to prevent investigators from hounding individuals for years or even decades after an alleged crime is committed. They were enacted with the knowledge that evidence eventually grows stale and is no longer useful to a state or federal government. In some instances, the statute of limitations does not completely halt an investigation. It may simply force the federal government to file charges prior to a particular deadline.

In that case, an individual has more rights and power. They have the right to discovery and to know the evidence that has been collected against them. They also have more leeway to publicly discuss the case and eventually get it thrown out from an impartial judge. Charges are not the most desirable outcome of an investigation. But they can help ensure that the investigation ends relatively quickly.

What to do

Anyone who is currently being investigated by the federal government needs to immediately seek the help of an attorney. This attorney will inform them of any and all statutes of limitations regarding their alleged crimes. They will also be able to keep overzealous investigators away from a particular target. In instances where investigators are overstepping their bounds, a lawyer can bring an injunction that keeps investigators far away from the individual and gets any charges that result from the investigation thrown out. In most cases, investigators will back off and act legally if they know that the target is being represented by a competent, capable defense attorney.

Conclusion

A federal investigation is always a serious manner. Individuals should be honest with investigators and do nothing to impede their investigation. But they should also hire a lawyer and keep in touch with that lawyer surrounding any potential violations of the law committed by federal investigators. There are statutes of limitations and other confining concepts that constrain the activities of these men and women. A lawyer is essential to ensuring that a person is protected from these many potentially illegal and immoral actions.