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Page Number: 19.0

4 

THOMPSON v. CLARK 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 813 (1996); see also 
Cordova  v.  Albuquerque,  816  F. 3d  645,  664  (CA10  2016) 
(Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment). 

Finally, the validity of an unreasonable-seizure claim is 
not dependent on the outcome of any prosecution that hap-
pens to follow a seizure.  A person who is arrested without
probable cause but then convicted based on evidence discov-
ered after the arrest is not barred from recovering simply
because he or she cannot show a favorable termination to 
the  proceeding.  See  Wallace  v.  Kato,  549  U. S.  384,  389– 
392 (2007); cf. Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U. S. 477, 487, n. 7 
(1994) (a person may bring “a suit for damages attributable
to an allegedly unreasonable search” even if he or she was
convicted).  Thus,  an  unreasonable-seizure  claim  may  be
shown without proving any of the  elements of a common-
law malicious-prosecution claim.

Turning now to the elements of malicious prosecution, we 
see that all of those may be established without proving ei-
ther of the two elements that the constitutional text and our 
precedents  require  in  order  to  establish  an  unreasonable 
seizure. 

First, the tort of malicious prosecution does not require a
seizure  within  the  meaning  of  the  Fourth  Amendment. 
There  are  cases  in  which  defendants  charged  with  non-
violent crimes agree to appear for arraignment and are then
released pending trial on their own recognizance.  These de-
fendants are prosecuted, and they may bring a common-law
suit for malicious prosecution if the other elements of that 
tort can be shown, but they are not seized.  See, e.g., 1 Hil-
liard §1, at 412 (noting that malicious prosecution may in-
volve “injury to the person, as connected with false impris-
onment,”  but  is  “primarily  . . .  a  wrong  to  character  or 
reputation”);  3  D.  Dobbs,  The  Law  of  Torts  §586,  p.  388
(2011)  (the  “prosecution  does  not  necessarily  involve  any
detention of the plaintiff at all”).  The term seizure would 
have to be given a novel and extravagant interpretation in