{"id":11849,"date":"2026-03-20T10:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T17:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=11849"},"modified":"2026-03-20T10:14:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T17:14:51","slug":"civil-suits-habeas-corpus-and-past-convictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=11849","title":{"rendered":"Civil Suits, Habeas Corpus, and Past Convictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Supreme Court decided one case today,\u00a0Olivier v. City of<\/em> Brandon<\/em><\/a>. The court pruned back a bit on a precedent set in 1994 to stop convicted criminals from using civil suits to evade the limits on collateral attack on their convictions.<\/p>\n

In the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War, Congress passed a boatload of legislation, a few remnants of which survive today. One act expanded the jurisdiction of federal courts to issue writs of habeas corpus to prisoners held by the state in violation of federal law, something the First Congress had flatly prohibited when it first set up the federal courts. Another law authorized civil suits for violations of federal rights.<\/p>\n

Over time, the writ of habeas corpus evolved to be a method of attacking criminal judgments that were already final, something else that generally was not allowed originally. The Supreme Court expanded its use in the 1950s and 1960s, when state resistance to federal rights, especially in racial matters, was rampant. In the 1970s through the mid-1990s, the writ was increasing misused by lower federal courts to simply substitute their own views for the considered, good-faith, and often correct decisions of state courts. The Supreme Court issued a series of decisions placing limits on federal habeas corpus, some of which CJLF helped establish. In 1996, Congress jumped in and enacted a sweeping reform going further than the Court had.<\/p>\n

One of the limits, established in the 1880s but given renewed force a century later, is the rule that before turning to the federal courts the prisoner must exhaust the remedies available to him in the state courts. The law authorizing civil suits has no such limitation.<\/p>\n

In this environment, the Supreme Court decided the 1994 case of\u00a0Heck v. Humphrey<\/em><\/a>. Heck filed a civil suit claiming damages for alleged violations in the course of investigating the homicide for which he was convicted in state court, a conviction affirmed on appeal. If true, his allegations would render his conviction illegal, but its legality had already been resolved against him. The actual holding of\u00a0Heck<\/em> is this:<\/p>\n

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, a \u00a7 1983 plaintiff must prove that the conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court’s issuance of a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. \u00a7 2254.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The boundaries of this holding have been the subject of a number of cases since.<\/p>\n

In today’s case, Gabriel Olivier is a street preacher who likes to go to big public events to “communicate his message.” Five years ago, he was convicted of a minor offense for straying outside the designated area near an amphitheater in violation of a city ordinance. He got a $304 fine and a year probation.<\/p>\n

Now, Olivier wants a declaration that the ordinance is unconstitutional and an injunction against enforcing it in the future.<\/p>\n

On the merits, his claim is quite doubtful, in my opinion. Under the First Amendment, cities can impose time, place, and manner limits on speech that do not discriminate on the basis of content. CJLF participated in some of those cases quite some time ago, including getting the obnoxious Hare Krishnas removed from airports.<\/p>\n

But this opinion is not about the merits. Is this civil suit barred by the\u00a0Heck<\/em> rule? The present case, unlike\u00a0Heck<\/em>, does not involve actions in the prior case but rather the law in the prior case. Shortly after the passage quoted above, the\u00a0Heck<\/em> court said, “when a state prisoner seeks damages in a \u00a71983 suit, the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence; if it would, the complaint must be dismissed\u201d (unless the conviction has already been invalidated). Today’s decision held that sentence swept too broadly.<\/p>\n

A hypothetical person who had not previously been convicted under the ordinance could challenge it. (Justice Kagan has a bit of fun with the plaintiff’s surname, naming her hypothetical unconvicted plaintiff Laurence. To sue or not to sue, that is the question.) So why shouldn’t Gabriel Olivier be able to challenge it? The court’s latest wrinkle in the wavering line between habeas corpus and civil suits is that a civil suit that looks only forward, not to past events, does not come within the Heck<\/em> bar.<\/p>\n

Once again, [a\u00a0Heck<\/em>-type] suit requires looking back to conduct involved in a prior conviction, and offering contradictory proof. By contrast, there is no looking back in Olivier\u2019s suit. Both in the allegations made, and in the relief sought, the suit is all future-oriented\u2014even if, as a kind of byproduct, success in it shows that something past should not have occurred. The Heck<\/em> Court did not consider such a suit, and the Heck<\/em> language was not meant to address it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Where does this leave the protection of state court criminal judgments? In the prior criminal case, the defendant either failed to raise the objection to the state courts or raised it and had it decided against him. Assuming the latter decision was within the range of reasonable disagreement, federal habeas corpus law protects the state decision from abrogation by any federal court other than the Supreme Court exercising direct review.\u00a0Can criminal defendants now evade both the exhaustion and deference rules by getting a federal civil judgment and then returning to state court to demand expungement of the criminal conviction? It may not matter in this petty misdemeanor case, but it matters a lot for major felonies.<\/p>\n

The answer, I would think, is that the federal prospective-only judgment does not require revisiting the state retrospective judgment. The state’s default rules or its prior, reasonable decision on the merits should still maintain the criminal judgment intact. State courts are not required to follow the decisions of any federal court other than the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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