Favorable termination and miscarriages of justice

Case out of the Fifth Circuit, written by Judge Willett, on Heck v. Humphrey and the so-called Heck bar or habeas exception to § 1983:

A former county ADA in Texas moonlighted for two decades as law clerk to the judges of that district. He was discovered in 2019 and disbarred. Erma Wilson was convicted of cocaine possession in 2001 and received an 8-year suspended sentence. Wilson learned about the conflict when a capital conviction was overturned on habeas (she was not among the many people who received written notice from the DA about the conflict) and brought a § 1983 action, more than two decades after her conviction and more than a decade after completing her sentence.

Heck precludes § 1983 damages actions that would functionally call into question the validity of a conviction or sentence; habeas provides the sole federal vehicle for challenging state convictions. A § 1983 plaintiff must show "favorable termination" as an element of her claim. The problem arises when, as in Wilson, an individual no longer is in custody and thus cannot challenge the conviction or sentence through habeas. The Heck majority adopted favorable termination as an absolute rule. Justice Souter concurred in the judgment to argue that favorable termination should apply only at the "intersection" of habeas and § 1983, where both vehicles might be available; it should not apply when habeas is unavailable because the plaintiff no longer is in custody. Souter illustrates with a hypo that basically matches this case--a procedurally compromised conviction where the person does not learn about the compromise until after his release from custody. In Spencer v. Kemna, five Justices in three separate opinions adopted that position. This precipitated a circuit split--five circuits, including the Fifth, hold that Heck always applies; six allow for some exceptions; the answer depends on whether lower courts can count noses to find binding precedent or whether SCOTUS creates binding precedent only through a single majority opinion. Because the Fifth Circuit requires favorable termination, Wilson's claim was Heck-barred.

Judge Willett was outraged. He described the conduct and the outcome as "utterly bonkers," "difficult to explain," "hard to take in," and "underscor[ing] that the American legal system regularly leaves constitutional wrongs unrighted." He footnotes the last with references to prosecutorial immunity, Monell, and qualified immunity, stating "Upshot: Many Americans’ rights are violated but not vindicated."

Two questions of interest going forward:

1) What happens next. Willett emphasizes that the en banc court or SCOTUS could overrule its precedent on this point. Which avenue will and should the plaintiff pursue?  En banc Fifth Circuit review (and overruling) allows Wilson to avoid Heck and pursue her claim. But it does not resolve the broader circuit split; even if the Fifth Circuit changes its position, five other circuits continue to deny relief to plaintiffs in Wilson's shoes.* Much depends on what Wilson and/or her attorneys want to achieve--a remedy for her in this case or a broader change in the law. I guess this case may offer an interesting example of the occasional gap between cause lawyering and individual representation.

[*] The Seventh Circuit went the other way--it moved to the  "Heck applies" position in 2020 after years of allowing plaintiffs to avoid Heck where they diligently pursued the federal issues diligently and lost the opportunity to pursue habeas through no fault of their own.

2) Wilson's Other Options. The court fails to mention that Wilson had other options or whether she attempted to take advantage of them. Heck lists several ways to obtain favorable termination, including where the conviction has been "expunged by executive order, [or] declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination." Lower courts have held the former to include pardons and executive clemency, at least where the pardon makes clear the basis and why it reflects favorable termination. Did Wilson seek a pardon? Alternatively, did she ask the state trial court to vacate the conviction? Neither the complaint, magistrate report, district court opinion, or Fifth Circuit opinion say so. Either would provide the needed favorable termination, mooting the question in this case of when favorable termination applies.

From the standpoint of § 1983's history, those options are unacceptable because they require plaintiffs to rely on state-law processes, whereas § 1983 reflects congressional distrust of state courts and state institutions; Souter makes this point in his Heck concurrence. At least in this case, however, I would expect even Greg Abbott to be receptive to a pardon; the optics and politics seem obvious.