§ 131.135 When prosecution commenced

Here's a plain English summary of this rule:

A criminal case officially starts the moment a judge issues a warrant or similar legal document against someone. This matters because it can affect deadlines like the statute of limitations, which limits how long prosecutors have to bring charges.

There's one catch though. The warrant has to actually get served on the person without unreasonable delay. If police or prosecutors sit on a warrant for too long before acting on it, the case might not count as having started when the warrant was first issued.

In short, this rule protects people from prosecutors gaming the system. Prosecutors can't just quietly issue a warrant to beat a deadline and then wait months or years to actually serve it. If they drag their feet without good reason, courts may decide the case didn't really begin until much later, which could mean the charges are too old to pursue.