Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: regarding prosection of a minor

As long as the statute of limitations has not run, an adult can be prosecuted for crimes he or she committed as a minor. The rules governing prosecutions of minors would be applied even though the defendant has become an adult.

(Note that, in some instances of particularly serious crimes, minors can be tried as adults. That rule would also apply to a minor who reaches adulthood before the case is resolved.)

The alternative would be that minors approaching their eighteenth birthdays could freely commit crimes, secure in the knowledge that their prosecutions could not be completed before they reached adulthood. That is an absurd result, and the law generally tries to avoid absurdity.