486
Opinion of the Court
263 U. S. 413 (1923); Voorhees v. Jackson, 10 Pet. 449, 472- 473 (1836). We think the hoary principle that civil tort actions are not appropriate vehicles for challenging the validity of outstanding criminal judgments applies to § 1983 damages actions that necessarily require the plaintiff to prove the unlawfulness of his conviction or confinement, just as it has always applied to actions for malicious prosecution.5
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,6 a § 1983 plaintiff must prove
5 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, 235 Va. 531, 539-540, 369 S. E. 2d 857, 862 (1988); see also 8 S. Speiser, C. Krause, & A. Gans, American Law of Torts §§ 28:32-28:34 (1991). Cognizable injury for abuse of process is limited to the harm caused by the misuse of process, and does not include harm (such as conviction and confinement) resulting from that process's being carried through to its lawful conclusion. Thus, one could no more seek compensatory damages for an outstanding criminal conviction in an action for abuse of process than in one for malicious prosecution. This limitation is illustrated by McGann v. Allen, 105 Conn. 177, 191, 134 A. 810, 815 (1926), where the court held that expenses incurred by the plaintiff in defending herself against crimes charged against her were not compensable in a suit for abuse of process, since "[d]amage[s] for abuse of process must be confined to the damage flowing from such abuse, and be confined to the period of time involved in taking plaintiff, after her arrest, to [defendant's] store, and the detention there."
6 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, 496 N. E. 2d 683 (1986); 4 C. Torcia, Wharton's Criminal Law § 593, p. 307 (14th ed. 1981).) He then brings a § 1983 action against the
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