Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/512/477/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 03:53:22+00:00

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An individual bringing a claim under 42 U.S.C. 1983 must base the pursuit of damages for an unconstitutional conviction on the reversal or invalidation of the conviction.
Heck appealed his conviction of voluntary manslaughter in Indiana while bringing a claim against the prosecutors, including Humphrey, under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983. He argued that his civil rights had been violated because the prosecutors had destroyed exculpatory evidence in his case. The lower court refused to hear the case because it ruled that it raised issues that were directly related to Heck's incarceration. During the appeal of the civil rights action, Heck lost his appeals of his conviction in state and federal courts. The Seventh Circuit ruled that his civil rights case should be dismissed, since it is essentially challenged the validity of his conviction.
Litigation by prisoners in federal court tends to be based on Section 1983 or the Habeas Corpus Statute, which are intended to provide remedies for unconstitutional treatment by state officials. While Section 1983 does not require exhausting state remedies, habeas petitions do. Although habeas proceedings are generally the only way for prisoners to challenge their confinement, the money damages that were sought in this Section 1983 claim could not have been pursued through habeas proceedings. Rather than adding an exhaustion requirement to Section 1983, certain types of claims should be recognized as categorically impermissible under it. As with actions based on malicious prosecution, the prisoner must be able to show that the conviction has been invalidated, even if all state remedies have been exhausted.
The conflict between Section 1983 claims and habeas proceedings has been caused by overly generous judicial interpretations of both statutes, so it is appropriate to narrow their scope.
A malicious prosecution cause of action should not necessarily be the standard for determining the elements of a Section 1983 claim. However, challenging a conviction under Section 1983 improperly frustrates the intentions of Congress in creating this provision. This decision should be limited to criminal defendants who are in custody, since the dissonance with the habeas rule does not exist for people who are not in custody, and they should not be subject to the requirements provided here.
The Court did not reach the issue of how the doctrine of res judicata will intersect with these types of Section 1983 claims, which makes the impact of this decision difficult to discern.
HECK v. HUMPHREY ET AL.
While petitioner Heck's direct appeal from an Indiana conviction was pending, he filed this suit under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, seeking damagesbut not injunctive relief or release from custody-on the claim that respondents, acting under color of state law, had engaged in unlawful acts that had led to his arrest and conviction. Mter the Federal District Court dismissed this action without prejudice, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld Heck's conviction and sentence, and his two petitions for federal habeas relief were rejected. The Court of Appeals then affirmed the dismissal of the § 1983 complaint and approved the District Court's reasoning: If the plaintiff in a federal civil rights action is challenging the legality of his conviction, so that his victory would require his release even if he had not sought that relief, the suit must be classified as a habeas corpus action and dismissed if the plaintiff has failed to exhaust his state remedies.
the dismissal of Heck's § 1983 action was correct because both courts below found that his damages claims challenged the legality of his conviction. Pp.480-490.
SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 490. SOUTER, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which BLACKMUN, STEVENS, and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined, post, p. 491.
Charles Rothfeld argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner.
Matthew R. Gutwein argued the cause for respondents.
This case presents the question whether a state prisoner may challenge the constitutionality of his conviction in a suit for damages under 42 U. S. C. § 1983.
* A brief of amici curiae was filed for the State of Arizona et al. by Grant Woods, Attorney General of Arizona, Paul J. McMurdie, and Linda L. Knowles, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: James H. Evans of Alabama, Winston Bryant of Arkansas, Daniel E. Lungren of California, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Larry EchoHawk of Idaho, Roland W Burris of Illinois, Chris Gorman of Kentucky, Michael C. Moore of Mississippi, Joseph T. Mazurek of Montana, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Deborah T. Poritz of New Jersey, Lee Fisher of Ohio, T. Travis Medlock of South Carolina, Mark W Barnett of South Dakota, Dan Morales of Texas, Jan Graham of Utah, and Joseph B. Meyer of Wyoming.
proceeding pro se, filed this suit in Federal District Court under 42 U. S. C. § 1983,1 naming as defendants respondents James Humphrey and Robert Ewbank, Dearborn County prosecutors, and Michael Krinoph, an investigator with the Indiana State Police. The complaint alleged that respondents, acting under color of state law, had engaged in an "unlawful, unreasonable, and arbitrary investigation" leading to petitioner's arrest; "knowingly destroyed" evidence "which was exculpatory in nature and could have proved [petitioner's] innocence"; and caused "an illegal and unlawful voice identification procedure" to be used at petitioner's trial. App. 5-6. The complaint sought, among other things, compensatory and punitive monetary damages. It did not ask for injunctive relief, and petitioner has not sought release from custody in this action.
The District Court dismissed the action without prejudice, because the issues it raised "directly implicate the legality of [petitioner's] confinement," id., at 13. While petitioner's appeal to the Seventh Circuit was pending, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld his conviction and sentence on direct appeal, Heck v. State, 552 N. E. 2d 446, 449 (Ind. 1990); his first petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal District Court was dismissed because it contained unexhausted claims; and his second federal habeas petition was denied, and the denial affirmed by the Seventh Circuit.
1 Section 1983 provides: "Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress."
rights action] is challenging the legality of his conviction, so that if he won his case the state would be obliged to release him even if he hadn't sought that relief, the suit is classified as an application for habeas corpus and the plaintiff must exhaust his state remedies, on pain of dismissal if he fails to do so." 997 F.2d 355, 357 (1993). Heck filed a petition for certiorari, which we granted. 510 U. S. 1068 (1994).
2 Neither in his petition for certiorari nor in his principal brief on the merits did petitioner contest the description of his monetary claims (by both the District Court and the Court of Appeals) as challenging the legality of his conviction. Thus, the question we understood to be before us was whether money damages premised on an unlawful conviction could be pursued under § 1983. Petitioner sought to challenge this premise in his reply brief, contending that findings validating his damages claims would not invalidate his conviction. See Reply Brief for Petitioner 5-6. That argument comes too late. We did not take this case to review such a fact-bound issue, and we accept the characterization of the lower courts.
We also decline to pursue, without implying the nonexistence of, another issue, suggested by the Court of Appeals' statement that, if petitioner's "conviction were proper, this suit would in all likelihood be barred by res judicata." 997 F.2d 355, 357 (CA7 1993). The res judicata effect of state-court decisions in § 1983 actions is a matter of state law. See Migra v. Warren City School Dist. Ed. of Ed., 465 U. S. 75 (1984).
contrast, requires that state prisoners first seek redress in a state forum.3 See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509 (1982).
Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475 (1973), considered the potential overlap between these two provisions, and held that habeas corpus is the exclusive remedy for a state prisoner who challenges the fact or duration of his confinement and seeks immediate or speedier release, even though such a claim may come within the literal terms of § 1983. Id., at 488-490. We emphasize that Preiser did not create an exception to the "no exhaustion" rule of § 1983; it merely held that certain claims by state prisoners are not cognizable under that provision, and must be brought in habeas corpus proceedings, which do contain an exhaustion requirement.
3 Title 28 U. S. C. § 2254(b) provides: "An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted unless it appears that the applicant has exhausted the remedies available in the courts of the State, or that there is either an absence of available State corrective process or the existence of circumstances rendering such process ineffective to protect the rights of the prisoner."
conviction. In that situation, the claimant can be said to be "attacking ... the fact or length of ... confinement," bringing the suit within the other dictum of Preiser: "Congress has determined that habeas corpus is the appropriate remedy for state prisoners attacking the validity of the fact or length of their confinement, and that specific determination must override the general terms of § 1983." Id., at 490. In the last analysis, we think the dicta of Preiser to be an unreliable, if not an unintelligible, guide: that opinion had no cause to address, and did not carefully consider, the damages question before us today.
wrong procedures, not for reaching the wrong result (i. e., denying good-time credits). Nor is there any indication in the opinion, or any reason to believe, that using the wrong procedures necessarily vitiated the denial of good-time credits. Thus, the claim at issue in Wolff did not call into question the lawfulness of the plaintiff's continuing confinement. See Fulford v. Klein, 529 F.2d 377, 381 (1976), adhered to, 550 F.2d 342 (CA5 1977) (en bane); Schwartz, The Preiser Puzzle: Continued Frustrating Conflict Between the Civil Rights and Habeas Corpus Remedies for State Prisoners, 37 DePaul L. Rev. 85, 120-121, 145-146 (1988).
Thus, the question posed by § 1983 damages claims that do call into question the lawfulness of conviction or confinement remains open. To answer that question correctly, we see no need to abandon, as the Seventh Circuit and those courts in agreement with it have done, our teaching that § 1983 contains no exhaustion requirement beyond what Congress has provided. Patsy, 457 U. S., at 501, 509. The issue with respect to monetary damages challenging conviction is not, it seems to us, exhaustion; but rather, the same as the issue was with respect to injunctive relief challenging conviction in Preiser: whether the claim is cognizable under § 1983 at all. We conclude that it is not.
"We have repeatedly noted that 42 U. S. C. § 1983 creates a species of tort liability." Memphis Community School Dist. v. Stachura, 477 U. S. 299, 305 (1986) (internal quotation marks omitted). "[O]ver the centuries the common law of torts has developed a set of rules to implement the principle that a person should be compensated fairly for injuries caused by the violation of his legal rights. These rules, defining the elements of damages and the prerequisites for their recovery, provide the appropriate starting point for the inquiry under § 1983 as well." Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S. 247, 257-258 (1978). Thus, to determine whether there is any bar to the present suit, we look first to the common law of torts. Cf. Stachura, supra, at 306.
The common-law cause of action for malicious prosecution provides the closest analogy to claims of the type considered here because, unlike the related cause of action for false arrest or imprisonment, it permits damages for confinement imposed pursuant to legal process. "If there is a false arrest claim, damages for that claim cover the time of detention up until issuance of process or arraignment, but not more." W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts 888 (5th ed. 1984). But a successful malicious prosecution plaintiff may recover, in addition to general damages, "compensation for any arrest or imprisonment, including damages for discomfort or injury to his health, or loss of time and deprivation of the society." Id., at 887-888 (footnotes omitted). See also Roberts v. Thomas, 135 Ky. 63, 121 S. W. 961 (1909).
standing criminal convictions. Malicious prosecution is an inapt analogy, he says, because "[a] defendant's conviction, under Reconstruction-era common law, dissolved his claim for malicious prosecution because the conviction was regarded as irrebuttable evidence that the prosecution never lacked probable cause." Post, at 496, citing T. Cooley, Law of Torts 185 (1879). Chief Justice Cooley no doubt intended merely to set forth the general rule that a conviction defeated the malicious prosecution plaintiff's allegation (essential to his cause of action) that the prior proceeding was without probable cause. But this was not an absolute rule in all jurisdictions, see Goodrich v. Warner, 21 Conn. 432, 443 (1852); Richter v. Koster, 45 Ind. 440, 441-442 (1874), and early on it was recognized that there must be exceptions to the rule in cases involving circumstances such as fraud, perjury, or mistake of law, see Burt v. Place, 4 Wend. 591 (N. Y. 1830); Witham v. Gowen, 14 Me. 362 (1837); Olson v. Neal, 63 Iowa 214, 18 N. W. 863 (1884). Some cases even held that a "conviction, although it be afterwards reversed, is prima facie evidence-and that only-of the existence of probable cause." Neher v. Dobbs, 41 Neb. 863, 868, 66 N. W. 864, 865 (1896) (collecting cases). In Crescent City Live Stock Co. v. Butchers' Union Slaughter-House Co., 120 U. S. 141 (1887), we recognized that "[h]ow much weight as proof of probable cause shall be attributed to the judgment of the court in the original action, when subsequently reversed for error, may admit of some question." Id., at 149. We attempted to "reconcile the apparent contradiction in the authorities," id., at 151, by observing that the presumption of probable cause arising from a conviction can be rebutted only by showing that the conviction had been obtained by some type of fraud, ibid. Although we ultimately held for the malicious prosecution defendant, our discussion in that case well establishes that the absolute rule JUSTICE SOUTER contends for did not exist.
Yet even if JUSTICE SOUTER were correct in asserting that a prior conviction, although reversed, "dissolved [a] claim for malicious prosecution," post, at 496, our analysis would be unaffected. It would simply demonstrate that no common-law action, not even malicious prosecution, would permit a criminal proceeding to be impugned in a tort action, even after the conviction had been reversed. That would, if anything, strengthen our belief that § 1983, which borrowed general tort principles, was not meant to permit such collateral attack.
5 JUSTICE SOUTER'S discussion of abuse of process, post, at 494-495, does not undermine this principle. It is true that favorable termination of prior proceedings is not an element of that cause of action-but neither is an impugning of those proceedings one of its consequences. The gravamen of that tort is not the wrongfulness of the prosecution, but some extortionate perversion of lawfully initiated process to illegitimate ends. See, e. g., Donohoe Const. Co. v. Mount Vernon Associates, 235 Va. 531, 539-540, 369 S. E. 2d 857, 862 (1988); see also 8 S. Speiser, C. Krause, & A. Gans, American Law of Torts §§ 28:32-28:34 (1991). Cognizable injury for abuse of process is limited to the harm caused by the misuse of process, and does not include harm (such as conviction and confinement) resulting from that process's being carried through to its lawful conclusion. Thus, one could no more seek compensatory damages for an outstanding criminal conviction in an action for abuse of process than in one for malicious prosecution. This limitation is illustrated by McGann v. Allen, 105 Conn. 177, 191, 134 A. 810, 815 (1926), where the court held that expenses incurred by the plaintiff in defending herself against crimes charged against her were not compensable in a suit for abuse of process, since "[d]amage[s] for abuse of process must be confined to the damage flowing from such abuse, and be confined to the period of time involved in taking plaintiff, after her arrest, to [defendant's] store, and the detention there."
arresting officer, seeking damages for violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures. In order to prevail in this § 1983 action, he would have to negate an element of the offense of which he has been convicted. Regardless of the state law concerning res judicata, see n. 2, supra, the § 1983 action will not lie.
7 For example, a suit for damages attributable to an allegedly unreasonable search may lie even if the challenged search produced evidence that was introduced in a state criminal trial resulting in the § 1983 plaintiff's still-outstanding conviction. Because of doctrines like independent source and inevitable discovery, see Murray v. United States, 487 U. S. 533, 539 (1988), and especially harmless error, see Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U. S. 279,307-308 (1991), such a § 1983 action, even if successful, would not necessarily imply that the plaintiff's conviction was unlawful. In order to recover compensatory damages, however, the § 1983 plaintiff must prove not only that the search was unlawful, but that it caused him actual, compensable injury, see Memphis Community School Dist. v. Stachura, 477 U. S. 299, 308 (1986), which, we hold today, does not encompass the "injury" of being convicted and imprisoned (until his conviction has been overturned).
state-court proceedings. See Colorado River Water Conservation Dist.
Moreover, we do not decide whether abstention might be appropriate in cases where a state prisoner brings a § 1983 damages suit raising an issue that also could be grounds for relief in a state-court challenge to his conviction or sentence. Cf. Tower v. Glover, 467 U. S. 914, 923 (1984).
them the courts can, and indeed should, be guided by the federal policies reflected in congressional enactments. Cf. Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U. S. 375, 390-391 (1970). See also United States v. Mendoza, 464 U. S. 154 (1984) (recognizing exception to general principles of res judicata in light of overriding federal policy concerns). Thus, the court-made preclusion rules may, as judicial application of the categorical mandate of § 1983 may not, see Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 509 (1982), take account of the policy embodied in § 2254(b)'s exhaustion requirement, see Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509 (1982), that state courts be given the first opportunity to review constitutional claims bearing upon state prisoners' release from custody.
10 JUSTICE SOUTER also adopts the common-law principle that one cannot use the device of a civil tort action to challenge the validity of an outstanding criminal conviction, but thinks it necessary to abandon that principle in those cases (of which no real-life example comes to mind) involving former state prisoners who, because they are no longer in custody, cannot bring postconviction challenges. Post, at 500. We think the principle barring collateral attacks-a longstanding and deeply rooted feature of both the common law and our own jurisprudence-is not rendered inapplicable by the fortuity that a convicted criminal is no longer incarcerated. JUSTICE SOUTER opines that disallowing a damages suit for a former state prisoner framed by Ku Klux Klan-dominated state officials is "hard indeed to reconcile ... with the purpose of § 1983." Post, at 502. But if, as JUSTICE SOUTER appears to suggest, the goal of our interpretive enterprise under § 1983 were to provide a remedy for all conceivable invasions of federal rights that freedmen may have suffered at the hands of officials of the former States of the Confederacy, the entire landscape of our § 1983 jurisprudence would look very different. We would not, for example, have adopted the rule that judicial officers have absolute immunity from liability for damages under § 1983, Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547 (1967), a rule that would prevent recovery by a former slave who had been tried and convicted before a corrupt state judge in league with the Ku Klux Klan.
stand the difficulty of the task before the Court today. Both the Court and JUSTICE SOUTER embark on a similar enterprise-harmonizing "[t]he broad language of § 1983," a "general" statute, with "the specific federal habeas corpus statute." Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 489 (1973).
I write separately to note that it is we who have put § 1983 and the habeas statute on what JUSTICE SOUTER appropriately terms a "collision course." Post, at 492. It has long been recognized that we have expanded the prerogative writ of habeas corpus and § 1983 far beyond the limited scope either was originally intended to have. Cf., e. g., Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277, 285-286 (1992) (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (habeas); Golden State Transit Corp. v. Los Angeles, 493 U. S. 103, 117 (1989) (KENNEDY, J., dissenting) (§ 1983). Expanding the two historic statutes brought them squarely into conflict in the context of suits by state prisoners, as we made clear in Preiser.
Given that the Court created the tension between the two statutes, it is proper for the Court to devise limitations aimed at ameliorating the conflict, provided that it does so in a principled fashion. Cf. Malley v. Briggs, 475 U. S. 335,342 (1986). Because the Court today limits the scope of § 1983 in a manner consistent both with the federalism concerns undergirding the explicit exhaustion requirement of the habeas statute, ante, at 483, and with the state of the common law at the time § 1983 was enacted, ante, at 484-486, and n. 4, I join the Court's opinion.
"provide access to a federal forum for claims of unconstitutional treatment at the hands of state officials," while "differ[ing] in their scope and operation." Ante, at 480. But instead of analyzing the statutes to determine which should yield to the other at this intersection, the Court appears to take the position that the statutes were never on a collision course in the first place because, like the common-law tort of malicious prosecution, § 1983 requires (and, presumably, has always required) plaintiffs seeking damages for unconstitutional conviction or confinement to show the favorable termination of the underlying proceeding. See ante, at 484-487.
"Section 1983 'creates a species of tort liability that on its face admits of no immunities.' Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409, 417 (1976). Nonetheless, we have accorded certain government officials either absolute or qualified immunity from suit if the 'tradition of immunity was so firmly rooted in the common law and was supported by such strong policy reasons that "Congress would have specifically so provided had it wished to abolish the doctrine.'" Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U. S. 622, 637 (1980) (quoting Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547, 555 (1967)). If parties seeking immunity were shielded from tort liability when Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1871-§ 1 of which is codified at 42 U. S. C. § 1983-we infer from legislative silence that Congress did not intend to abrogate such immunities when it imposed liability for actions taken under color of state law. See Tower v. Glover, 467 U. S. 914, 920 (1984); Imbler, supra, at 421; Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U. S. 522, 529 (1984). Additionally, irrespective of the common law support, we will not recognize an immunity available at common law if § 1983's history or purpose counsel against applying it in § 1983 actions. Tower, supra, at 920. See also Imbler, supra, at 424429." Id., at 163-164.
In his concurrence, JUSTICE KENNEDY stated: "It must be remembered that unlike the common-law judges whose doctrines we adopt, we are devising limitations to a remedial statute, enacted by the Congress, which 'on its face does not provide for any immunities.''' Id., at 171 (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U. S. 335, 342 (1986)) (emphasis added in Malley).
tion, a plaintiff in a malicious-prosecution action, according to the same sources the Court relies upon, must prove the "[a]bsence of probable cause for the proceeding" as well as "'[m]alice,' or a primary purpose other than that of bringing an offender to justice." W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts 871 (5th ed. 1984) (hereinafter Prosser and Keeton); see also 8 S. Speiser, C. Krause, & A. Gans, American Law of Torts § 28:7, p. 38, § 28:11, p. 61 (1991). As § 1983 requirements, however, these elements would mean that even a § 1983 plaintiff whose conviction was invalidated as unconstitutional (premised, for example, on a confession coerced by an interrogation-room beating) could not obtain damages for the unconstitutional conviction and ensuing confinement if the defendant police officials (or perhaps the prosecutor) had probable cause to believe the plaintiff was guilty and intended to bring him to justice. Absent an independent statutory basis for doing so, importing into § 1983 the malicious-prosecution tort's favorable-termination requirement but not its probablecause requirement would be particularly odd since it is from the latter that the former derives. See Prosser and Keeton 874 ("The requirement that the criminal prosecution terminate in favor of the malicious prosecution plaintiff ... is primarily important not as an independent element of the malicious prosecution action but only for what it shows about probable cause or guilt-in-fact"); M. Bigelow, Leading Cases on Law of Torts 196 (1875) ("The action for a malicious prosecution cannot be maintained until the prosecution has terminated; for otherwise the plaintiff might obtain judgment in the one case and yet be convicted in the other, which would of course disprove the averment of a want of probable cause").
2 As the Court observes, there are differences between the tort of abuse of process and that of malicious prosecution. Ante, at 486, n. 5. While "the gist of the tort [of malicious prosecution] is .... commencing an action or causing process to issue without justification," abuse of process involves "misusing, or misapplying process justified in itself for an end other than that which it was designed to accomplish." Prosser and Keeton 897. Neither common-law tort, however, precisely matches the statutory § 1983 claim for damages for unlawful conviction or confinement; and, depending on the nature of the underlying right alleged to have been violated (consider, for example, the right not to be selected for prosecution solely because of one's race), the tort of abuse of process might provide a better analogy to a § 1983 claim for unconstitutional conviction or confinement than the malicious-prosecution tort.
that a single tort in its late 20th-century form can conclusively (and retroactively) dictate the requirements of a 19th-century statute for a discrete category of cases. Defending the historical analogy, the Court suggests that Chief Justice Cooley did not mean what he clearly said and that, despite the Cooley treatise, the Reconstruction-era common law recognized a limited exception to the rule denying a malicious-prosecution plaintiff the benefit of the invalidation of his conviction: an exception for convictions "obtained by some type of fraud." Ante, at 485, n. 4 (citing Crescent City Live Stock Co. v. Butchers' Union Slaughter-House Co., 120 U. S. 141, 151 (1887)). Even if such a narrow exception existed, however, the tort of malicious prosecution as it stood during the mid-19th century would still make for a weak analogy to a statutory action under which, as even the Court accepts, defendants whose convictions were reversed as violating "any righ[t] ... secured by the Constitution," 42 U. S. C. § 1983, may obtain damages for the unlawful confinement associated with the conviction (assuming, of course, no immunity bar). Nor, of course, would the existence of such an exception explain how one element of a maliciousprosecution action may be imported into § 1983, but not the others.
at 481-483.) Whether or not a federal-court § 1983 damages judgment against state officials in such an action would have preclusive effect in later litigation against the State, mounting damages against the defendant-officials for unlawful confinement (damages almost certainly to be paid by state indemnification) would, practically, compel the State to release the prisoner. Because allowing a state prisoner to proceed directly with a federal-court § 1983 attack on his conviction or sentence "would wholly frustrate explicit congressional intent" as declared in the habeas exhaustion requirement, Preiser, 411 U. S., at 489, the statutory scheme must be read as precluding such attacks. This conclusion flows not from a preference about how the habeas and § 1983 statutes ought to have been written, but from a recognition that "Congress has determined that habeas corpus is the appropriate remedy for state prisoners attacking the validity of the fact or length of their confinement, [a] specific determination [that] must override the general terms of § 1983." Id., at 490.
It may be that the Court's analysis takes it no further than I would thus go, and that any objection I may have to the Court's opinion is to style, not substance. The Court acknowledges the habeas exhaustion requirement and explains that it is the reason that the habeas statute "intersect[s]"
4 The requirement that a state prisoner seeking § 1983 damages for unlawful conviction or confinement be successful in state court or on federal habeas strikes me as soundly rooted in the statutory scheme. Because "Congress has determined that habeas corpus is the appropriate remedy for state prisoners attacking the validity of the fact or length of their confinement, [a] specific determination [that] override[s] the general terms of § 1983," Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 490 (1973), a state prisoner whose constitutional attacks on his confinement have been rejected by state courts cannot be said to be unlawfully confined unless a federal habeas court declares his "custody [to be] in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States," 28 U. S. C. § 2254(a). An unsuccessful federal habeas petitioner cannot, therefore, consistently with the habeas statute, receive § 1983 damages for unlawful confinement. That is not to say, however, that a state prisoner whose request for release has been (or would be) rejected by state courts or by a federal habeas court is necessarily barred from seeking any § 1983 damages for violations of his constitutional rights. If a § 1983 judgment in his favor would not demonstrate the invalidity of his confinement he is outside the habeas statute and may seek damages for a constitutional violation even without showing "favorable termination." A state prisoner may, for example, seek damages for an unreasonable search that produced evidence lawfully or harmlessly admitted at trial, or even nominal damages for, say, a violation of his right to procedural due process, see Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S. 247, 266 (1978). See ante, at 487, and n. 7.
in this case with § 1983, which does not require exhaustion, see ante, at 480; it describes the issue it faces as "the same" as that in Preiser, ante, at 483; it recites the principle that common-law tort rules "'provide the appropriate starting point for the inquiry under § 1983,'" ibid. (quoting Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S., at 257-258); and it does not transpose onto § 1983 elements of the malicious-prosecution tort that are incompatible with the policies of § 1983 and the habeas statute as relevant to claims by state prisoners. The Court's opinion can be read as saying nothing more than that now, after enactment of the habeas statute and because of it, prison inmates seeking § 1983 damages in federal court for unconstitutional conviction or confinement must satisfy a requirement analogous to the malicious-prosecution tort's favorable-termination requirement. Cf. ante, at 491 (THOMAS, J., concurring).
That would be a sensible way to read the opinion, in part because the alternative would needlessly place at risk the rights of those outside the intersection of § 1983 and the habeas statute, individuals not "in custody" for habeas purposes. If these individuals (people who were merely fined, for example, or who have completed short terms of imprisonment, probation, or parole, or who discover (through no fault of their own) a constitutional violation after full expiration of their sentences), like state prisoners, were required to show the prior invalidation of their convictions or sentences in order to obtain § 1983 damages for unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, the result would be to deny any federal forum for claiming a deprivation of federal rights to those who cannot first obtain a favorable state ruling. The reason, of course, is that individuals not "in custody" cannot invoke federal habeas jurisdiction, the only statutory mechanism besides § 1983 by which individuals may sue state officials in federal court for violating federal rights. That would be an untoward result.
It is one thing to adopt a rule that forces prison inmates to follow the federal habeas route with claims that fall within the plain language of § 1983 when that is necessary to prevent a requirement of the habeas statute from being undermined. That is what the Court did in Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S., at 489-492, and that is what the Court's rule would do for state prisoners. Harmonizing § 1983 and the habeas statute by requiring a state prisoner seeking damages for unconstitutional conviction to establish the previous invalidation of his conviction does not run afoul of what we have called, repeatedly, "[t]he very purpose of" § 1983: "to interpose the federal courts between the States and the people, as guardians of the people's federal rights." Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 242 (1972); see also Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U. S. 522, 541 (1984); Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 503 (1982). A prisoner caught at the intersection of § 1983 and the habeas statute can still have his attack on the lawfulness of his conviction or confinement heard in federal court, albeit one sitting as a habeas court; and, depending on the circumstances, he may be able to obtain § 1983 damages.
release from state custody. If it were correct to say that § 1983 independently requires a person not in custody to establish the prior invalidation of his conviction, it would have been equally right to tell the former slave that he could not seek federal relief even against the law-enforcement officers who framed him unless he first managed to convince the state courts that his conviction was unlawful. That would be a result hard indeed to reconcile either with the purpose of § 1983 or with the origins of what was "popularly known as the Ku Klux Act," Collins v. Hardyman, 341 U. S. 651, 657 (1951), the statute having been enacted in part out of concern that many state courts were "in league with those who were bent upon abrogation of federally protected rights," Mitchum v. Foster, supra, at 240; cf. Congo Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 577 (1871) (Sen. Trumbull explaining that, under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, "the Federal Government has a right to set aside ... action of the State authorities" that deprives a person of his Fourteenth Amendment rights). It would also be a result unjustified by the habeas statute or any other post-§ 1983 enactment.
Nor do I see any policy reflected in a congressional enactment that would justify denying to an individual today federal damages (a significantly less disruptive remedy than an order compelling release from custody) merely because he was unconstitutionally fined by a State, or to a person who discovers after his release from prison that, for example, state officials deliberately withheld exculpatory material. And absent such a statutory policy, surely the common law can give us no authority to narrow the "broad language" of § 1983, which speaks of deprivations of "any" constitutional rights, privileges, or immunities, by "[e]very" person acting under color of state law, and to which "we have given full effect [by] recognizing that § 1983 'provide[s] a remedy, to be broadly construed, against all forms of official violation of federally protected rights.'" Dennis v. Higgins, 498 U. S. 439,443,445 (1991) (quoting Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658, 700-701 (1978)).
In sum, while the malicious-prosecution analogy provides a useful mechanism for implementing what statutory analysis requires, congressional policy as reflected in enacted statutes must ultimately be the guide. I would thus be clear that the proper resolution of this case (involving, of course, a state prisoner) is to construe § 1983 in light of the habeas statute and its explicit policy of exhaustion. I would not cast doubt on the ability of an individual unaffected by the habeas statute to take advantage of the broad reach of § 1983.
James Humphrey, Dearborn County Prosecutor, et al.

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