Opinion ID: 219133
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Threshold Issue: Manifest Injustice

Text: We have had occasion to observe that [t]he existence of special circumstances is required before a finding of manifest injustice.... At a minimum, the challenged decision should involve a significant inequity or the extinguishment of a right before being characterized as manifestly unjust. Jeffries v. Wood, 114 F.3d 1484, 1492 (9th Cir.1997) ( en banc ) (internal citations omitted). Of course, for reasons already indicated at the outset, the earlier denials of the writ in this case do not satisfy this test because the only relief of which they deprived Alaimalo was a meaningless piece of paper. Indeed, the majority concedes that the writ it orders the district court to grant will have no effect on Alaimalo's sentence. Majority Op. at 1050. Nevertheless, the majority suggests that it is necessary to vacate the challenged counts of conviction in order to remove the possibility that [Alaimalo] will be subject to their adverse collateral consequences. Id. These consequences are not specified. More significantly, the cases on which the majority relies provide no support for the proposition that failing to eliminate the possibility of any of these consequences would constitute a fundamental miscarriage of justice or a manifest injustice. Instead, those cases arose in an area of lawnamely, the case or controversy inquiry, under Article III, § 2 of the Constitutionin which the Supreme Court has accepted the most generalized and hypothetical consequences as sufficient to avoid mootness in challenges to [a] conviction. Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1, 10, 118 S.Ct. 978, 140 L.Ed.2d 43 (1998). Such speculative possibilities may be sufficient to overcome the doctrine of mootness, see id., or even the concurrent sentence doctrine, see Ball v. United States, 470 U.S. 856, 865, 105 S.Ct. 1668, 84 L.Ed.2d 740 (1985). Nevertheless, the suggestion that they constitute a fundamental miscarriage of justice or a manifest injustice renders those terms meaningless. Indeed, in Spencer v. Kemna , the Supreme Court began a retreat from its earlier willingness to presume adverse consequences sufficient to defeat a claim of mootness. 7 WAYNE R. LAFAVE ET AL., CRIMINAL PROCEDURE § 27.5(a) (3d ed. 2007). Specifically, it held that the possibility that a parole violation conviction could be used to impeach the defendant's testimony in a subsequent criminal prosecution was purely a matter of speculation, and insufficient to permit him to challenge a revocation of parole after he had served his sentence, Spencer, 523 U.S. at 16, 118 S.Ct. 978, implicitly overruling dictum in Ball, 470 U.S. at 865, 105 S.Ct. 1668. Similarly, in Maleng v. Cook, 490 U.S. 488, 109 S.Ct. 1923, 104 L.Ed.2d 540 (1989), the Supreme Court held that a defendant who had completed serving his sentence could not obtain habeas corpus relief with respect to that conviction merely because it could possibly be used to enhance his sentence if he committed a subsequent crime, id. at 492, 109 S.Ct. 1923, although it held open the possibility of a challenge to an actual subsequent sentence so enhanced, id. at 494, 109 S.Ct. 1923. Indeed, even before Spencer or Maleng, the Supreme Court had decided that, while challenges to certain remaining counts of an indictment were not moot, it would decline as a discretionary matter to rule on their validity. Barnes v. United States, 412 U.S. 837, 848 n. 16, 93 S.Ct. 2357, 37 L.Ed.2d 380 (1973).