Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/09-9000.ZS.html
Timestamp: 2014-10-24 12:12:27
Document Index: 95793002

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1983', '§1983', '§1983', '§1983', '§1983', '§1983', '§1983']

District Attorney’s Office for Third Judicial Dist.
There is federal-court subject-matter jurisdiction over Skinner’s complaint, and the claim he presses is cognizable under §1983. Pp. 7–15.
doctrine does not bar Skinner’s suit. This Court has applied the doctrine only in the two cases from which it takes its name, Rooker
, 263 U. S. 413
, District of Columbia Court of Appeals
, 460 U. S. 462
. See Exxon Mobil Corp.
, 544 U. S. 280
. Given “the narrow ground” the doctrine occupies, id.
“to cases … brought by state-court losers … inviting district court review and rejection of [a state court’s] judgments.” Ibid. Skinner’s complaint encounters no
Rooker-Feldman shoal. “If a federal plaintiff ‘present[s] [an] independent claim,’ ” it is not an impediment to the exercise of federal jurisdiction that the “same or a related question” was earlier aired between the parties in state court. Id.,
at 292–293. A state-court decision is not reviewable by lower federal courts, but a statute or rule governing the decision may be challenged in a federal action. See, e.g.,
, 460 U. S., at 487. Because Skinner’s federal case—which challenges not the adverse state-court decisions but the Texas statute they authoritatively construed—falls within the latter category, there was no lack of subject-matter jurisdiction over his federal suit. Pp. 8–10.
(c) Measured against this Court’s prior holdings, Skinner has properly invoked §1983. This Court has several times considered when a state prisoner, complaining of unconstitutional state action, may pursue a civil rights claim under §1983, and when habeas corpus is the prisoner’s sole remedy. The pathmarking decision, Heck
, 512 U. S. 477
, concerned a state prisoner who brought a §1983 action for damages, alleging that he had been unlawfully investigated, arrested, tried, and convicted. This Court held that §1983 was not an available remedy because any award in the plaintiff’s favor would “necessarily imply” the invalidity of his conviction. See id.
, the Court held that prisoners who challenged the constitutionality of administrative decisions denying them parole eligibility, could proceed under §1983, for they sought no “injunction ordering … immediate or speedier release into the community,” id.
, at 82, and “a favorable judgment [would] not ‘necessarily imply’ the invalidity of [their] conviction[s] or sentence[s],” ibid
. Here, success in Skinner’s suit for DNA testing would not “necessarily imply” the invalidity of his conviction. Test results might prove exculpatory, but that outcome is hardly inevitable, for those results could also prove inconclusive or incriminating. Switzer argues that, although Skinner’s immediate aim is DNA testing, his ultimate aim is to use the test results as a platform for attacking his conviction. But she has found no case in which the Court has recognized habeas as the sole remedy where the relief sought would not terminate custody, accelerate the date of release, or reduce the custody level. Contrary to the fears of Switzer and her
. Brady, which announced a constitutional requirement addressed to the prosecution’s conduct pretrial, proscribes withholding evidence “favorable to an accused” and “material to [his] guilt or to punishment.” Cone
, 556 U. S. ___, ___. Unlike DNA testing, which may yield exculpatory, incriminating, or inconclusive results, a successful Brady claim necessarily yields evidence undermining a conviction: Brady claims therefore rank within the traditional core of habeas corpus and outside the province of §1983. Pp. 10–14.