Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
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.
I
Petitioner Roy Heck was convicted in Indiana state court of voluntary manslaughter for the killing of Rickie Heck, his wife, and is serving a 15-year sentence in an Indiana prison. While the appeal from his conviction was pending, petitioner,
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,
When the Seventh Circuit reached petitioner’s appeal from dismissal of his § 1983 complaint, it affirmed the judgment and approved the reasoning of the District Court: “If, regardless of the relief sought, the plaintiff [in a federal civil
II
This case lies at the intersection of the two most fertile sources of federal-court prisoner litigation — the Civil Rights Act of 1871, Rev. Stat. § 1979, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and the federal habeas corpus statute, 28 U. S. C. § 2254. Both of these provide access to a federal forum for claims of unconstitutional treatment at the hands of state officials, but they differ in their scope and operation. In general, exhaustion of state remedies “is not a prerequisite to an action under § 1983,” Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla.,
Preiser v. Rodriguez,
This case is clearly not covered by the holding of Preiser, for petitioner seeks not immediate or speedier release, but monetary damages, as to which he could not “have sought and obtained fully effective relief through federal habeas corpus proceedings.” Id., at 488. See also id., at 494; Allen v. McCurry,
Before addressing that question, we respond to petitioner’s contention that it has already been answered, in Wolff v. McDonnell,
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,
“We have repeatedly noted that 42 U. S. C. § 1983 creates a species of tort liability.” Memphis Community School Dist. v. Stachura,
One element that must be alleged and proved in a malicious prosecution action is termination of the prior criminal proceeding in favor of the accused. Prosser and Keeton, supra, at 874; Carpenter v. Nutter,
We hold that, in order to recover damages for allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, or for other harm caused by actions whose unlawfulness would render a conviction or sentence invalid,
Applying these principles to the present action, in which both courts below found that the damages claims challenged the legality of the conviction, we find that the dismissal of the action was correct. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is
Affirmed.
Notes
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.”
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 6-6. 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.”
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.”
Justice Souter criticizes our reliance on malicious prosecution’s favorable termination requirement as illustrative of the common-law principle barring tort plaintiffs from mounting collateral attacks on their out
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.
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,
An example of this latter category — a § 1983 action that does not seek damages directly attributable to conviction or confinement but whose successful prosecution would necessarily imply that the plaintiff’s criminal conviction was wrongful — would be the following: A state defendant is convicted of and sentenced for the crime of resisting arrest, defined as intentionally preventing a peace officer from effecting a lawful arrest. (This is a common definition of that offense. See People v. Peacock, 68 N. Y. 2d 675,
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,
For example, if a state criminal defendant brings a federal civil-rights lawsuit during the pendency of his criminal trial, appeal, or state habeas action, abstention may be an appropriate response to the parallel
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,
State courts are bound to apply federal rules in determining the preclusive effect of federal-court decisions on issues of federal law. See P. Bator, D. Meltzer, P. Mishkin, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1604 (3d ed. 1988) (“It is clear that where the federal court decided a federal question, federal res judicata rules govern”); Deposit Bank v. Frankfort,
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,
Our recent opinion in Wyatt v. Cole,
“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 424-429.” 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,
Concurrence Opinion
concurring.
The Court and Justice Souter correctly begin their analyses with the realization that “[t]his case lies at the intersection of... the Civil Rights Act of 1871, Rev. Stat. § 1979, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and the federal habeas corpus statute, 28 U. S. C. §2254.” Ante, at 480; post, at 491. One need only read the respective opinions in this case to under
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,
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,
The Court begins its analysis as I would, by observing that “[t]his case lies at the intersection of the two most fertile sources of federal-court prisoner litigation — the Civil Rights Act of 1871, . . . 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and the federal habeas corpus statute, 28 U. S. C. §2254,” two statutes that
While I do not object to referring to the common law when resolving the question this case presents, I do not think that the existence of the tort of malicious prosecution alone provides the answer. Common-law tort rules can provide a “starting point for the inquiry under §1983,” Carey v. Piphus,
An examination of common-law sources arguably relevant in this case confirms the soundness of our hierarchy of principles for resolving questions concerning § 1983. If the common law were not merely a “starting point” for the analysis under § 1983, but its destination, then (unless we were to have some authority to choose common-law requirements we like and discard the others) principle would compel us to accept as elements of the § 1983 cause of action not only the malicious-prosecution tort’s favorable-termination requirement, but other elements of the tort that cannot coherently be transplanted. In addition to proving favorable termina
If, in addition, the common law were the master of statutory analysis, not the servant (to switch metaphors), we would find ourselves with two masters to contend with here, for we would be subject not only to the tort of malicious
Furthermore, even if the tort of malicious prosecution were today marginally more analogous than other torts to the type of § 1983 claim in the class of cases before us (because it alone may permit damages for unlawful conviction or postconviction confinement, see n. 3, infra), the Court overlooks a significant historical incongruity that calls into question the utility of the analogy to the tort of malicious
That leaves the question of how to implement what statutory analysis requires. It is at this point that the malicious-prosecution tort’s favorable-termination requirement becomes helpful, not in dictating the elements of a § 1983 cause of action, but in suggesting a relatively simple way to avoid collisions at the intersection of habeas and § 1983. A state prisoner may seek federal-court § 1983 damages for unconstitutional conviction or confinement, but only if he has previously established the unlawfulness of his conviction or confinement, as on appeal or on habeas. This has the effect of requiring a state prisoner challenging the lawfulness of his confinement to follow habeas’s rules before seeking §1983 damages for unlawful confinement in federal court, and it is ultimately the Court’s holding today. It neatly resolves a problem that has bedeviled lower courts, see
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^]”
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 would be an entirely different matter, however, to shut off federal courts altogether to claims that fall within the plain language of § 1983. “[Irrespective of the common law support” for a general rule disfavoring collateral attacks, the Court lacks the authority to do any such thing absent unambiguous congressional direction where, as here, reading § 1983 to exclude claims from federal court would run counter to “§1983’s history” and defeat the statute’s “purpose.” Wyatt v. Cole,
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,
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.
Some of the traditional common-law requirements appear to have liberalized over the years, see Prosser and Keeton 882 (“There is a considerable minority view which regards the conviction as creating only a presumption, which may be rebutted by any competent evidence showing that probable cause for the prosecution did not in fact exist”), strengthening the analogy the Court draws. But surely the Court is not of the view
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,