There is a move in the state Legislature to give prosecutors more time to prosecute those responsible for drug deals that result in death.

Current state law includes a two-year statute of limitations, a number prosecutors say isn’t long enough to bring prosecutions against those who sell drugs that end up killing someone. There are proposals active in the House and Senate from Rep. Dane Watro and Sen. Michele Brooks to set a five-year statute of limitations on such crimes, while another proposal by Rep. Clint Owlett would eliminate the statute of limitations entirely while making other changes to the law, including when there are multiple drugs involved and creating a defense for people who don’t “receive any service or anything of value in exchange” to distinguish friends who share drugs from dealers.

The law is broad and applies to anyone who illegally distributes drugs, ranging from street-level dealers to friends sharing drugs. And it does not require prosecutors to prove malicious intent or murder. Prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intentionally administered, distributed, or sold a controlled substance, and that the drug directly caused the victim’s death.

District attorneys are calling for more time to bring charges. For comparison, there is no statute of limitations on murder cases in Pennsylvania. But another reason for the limited prosecution of drug dealing resulting in death could just as likely lie in the fact we have too few investigators – particularly in rural areas – to bring charges within two years. Is adding more time going to fix that issue in a state that already brings among the most drug delivery resulting in death charges in the country?

Given the law’s breadth, two years would seem to be a reasonable timeframe to bring charges against those who shared drugs with a friend or even a street dealer. We can understand a longer statute of limitations for cases involving higher-level drug dealers – but that would mean adding degrees of drug dealing resulting in death, not a blanket increase in the statute of limitations.

It’s easy to simply advocate for as much time as is necessary to bring drug dealing resulting in death charges to court. But we’re not sure in all cases that the reason there are so few prosecutions of drug dealing resulting in death cases is that two years is too short a statute of limitations. The reason lawmakers should be careful here, in our opinion, is it becomes more difficult to mount a reasonable defense as time passes. And while we need to push for justice for families of those who are killed by illegal drugs and do what we can to take dealers off the street, we also must be fair to the accused.