Statute Search by Title:

When you want to search by Title, click on the title field and select the Maine title of interest. For example: Title 17-A is Maine Criminal Code or Title 29-A is Motor Vehicles. The results returned will display for you all the statutes contained with a specific title. Once the results page is displayed, you can click into any one of the responses for more detailed information for any statue given.

 

 

Statute Search by Name Index:

When you want to search by Name Index, then click on the title field and select the index you are interested in. For example: Selecting Agriculture will provide you will all the statutes associated with that topic. There are 64 listings in the name index for you to choose from. Once the results page is displayed, you can click into any one of the responses for more detailed information for any statue given.

 

Statute Search by Statute Id Number or Sequence Number:

Individuals charged and/or convicted of specific crimes subject to retention by the State Bureau of Identification for criminal history information are assigned a unique identification or sequence number. If you know the specific number, you can enter that number into the field identified as .StatID. for your search. This search will return information specific to this one identification number. For example: 8383 will return the results for Assault. Once the results page is displayed, you can click into response for more detailed information.

 

 

Statute Search using Date of Offense and Wild Cards:

The more fields you can fill in for your search criteria, the number of responses returned within the results will be fewer and more on target as to your search needs. Statutes have effective and expiration dates as statutes are amended or repealed and new ones are added. If I want to know what statues are in effect for a particular date of offense, a wild card search is the best one to use. For example: if I want to know which statute citation to use to charge an individual for a Class D assault which took place 30 days ago, I can narrow my search by using the date of offense and a wild card for the statute.

 

The results page will bring back a choice of 2 statutes for me to review.

Statute Search Using Wild Cards

The more fields you can fill in for your search criteria, the number of responses returned within the results will be fewer and more on target as to your search needs. For example: If I want to know about all statutes, which pertain to alcohol, then I can enter %alcohol% in the short description field. When the results are displayed, I do not see any citation about driving under the influence of alcohol so I am going to modify my search to the use of %influence% to see if I get different results.

The second set of results from %influence% gives me what I am looking for.