Henry W. Skinner, Petitioner v. LYNN Switzer, District Attorney for the 31st Judicial District of Texas (562 U.S. 521)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 7, 2011 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 562 U.S. 521 · 131 S. Ct. 1289
- Decided
- March 7, 2011
- Term
- October Term 2010
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. We granted review in this case to decide a question presented, but left unresolved, in District Attorney’s Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U. S. 52, 65-67 (2009): May a convicted state prisoner seeking DNA testing of crime-scene evidence assert that claim in a civil rights action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, or is such a claim cognizable in federal court only when asserted in a petition for a writ of ha-beas corpus under 28 U. S. C. § 2254? The Courts of Appeals have returned diverse responses. Compare McKithen v. Brown, 481 F. 3d 89, 99 (CA2 2007) (claim seeking DNA testing is cognizable under § 1983); Savory v. Lyons, 469 F. 3d 667, 669 (CA7 2006) (same); and Bradley v. Pryor, 305 F. 3d 1287, 1290-1291 (CA11 2002) (same), with Harvey v. Horan, 278 F. 3d 370, 375 (CA4 2002) (claim is not cognizable under § 1983); and Kutzner v. Montgomery County, 303 F. 3d 339, 341 (CA5 2002) (per curiam) (same). In Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 U. S. 74 (2005), we comprehensively surveyed this Court’s decisions on the respective provinces of § 1983 civil rights actions and §2254 federal ha-beas petitions. Habeas is the exclusive remedy, we reaffirmed, for the prisoner who seeks “immediate or speedier release” from confinement. Id., at 82. Where the prisoner’s claim would not “necessarily spell speedier release,” however, suit may…
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