year and a day

A limitation of time for some purposes. Lyon v Cleveland, 170 Pa 611, 33 A 143 (former limitation upon sale of land under a judgment). The familiar rule in prosecutions for homicide that if death does not ensue within a year and a day after the infliction of a wound, it will be presumed that death, when it finally does occur, proceeded from some other cause. 26 Am J1st Homi § 269. The statute of Gloucester provided that an appeal of death must be sued out within a year and a day from the day of the victim's death, and this was said to be declaratory of the common law. The rule of a year and a day was also applied at common law to inquisitions of deodands, brought to forfeit to the king any personal chattel that was the immediate cause of a person's death. The reason for the rule was that the law does not look upon such a wound as the cause of a man's death if he lived longer than a year and a day. Louisville, Evansville & St. Louis Railroad Co. v Clarke, 152 US 230, 240, 38 L Ed 422, 424, 14 S Ct 579.