09-9000, Skinner v. Switzer

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Civil Rights
DNA testing

A convicted state prisoner seeking DNA testing of crime-scene evidence may assert that claim in a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. 1983.

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 v. Humphrey, 512 U. S. 477, concerned a state prisoner who brought a §1983action 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., at
487. In contrast, in Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 U. S. 74, 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 amici, in the Circuits that currently allow §1983 claims for DNA testing, there has been no flood of litigation seeking postconviction discovery of evidence associated with the questions of guilt or punishment. The projected toll on federal courts is all the more implausible regarding DNA testing claims, for Osborne has rejected substantive due process as a basis for such claims. More generally, in the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Congress has placed constraints on prisoner suits in order to prevent sportive federal-court filings. Nor is there cause for concern that the instant ruling will spill over to claims relying on Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83. 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 v. Bell, 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.

363 Fed. Appx. 302, reversed and remanded.

Local Effect: The opinion is consistent with Seventh Circuit precedent. Savory v. Lyons, 469 F.3d 667, 669 (7th Cir. 2006).

09-9000 Skinner v. Switzer

Ginsburg, J.; Thomas, J. dissenting

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