CASES ADJUDGED
IN THE
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
AT
OCTOBER TERM, 1997
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit
No. 96-7171. Argued November 12, 1997—Decided March 3, 1998
On October 17, 1990, petitioner began serving concurrent 3-year sentences for convictions of felony stealing and burglary, due to expire on October 16, 1993. On April 16, 1992, he was released on parole, but on September 24, 1992, that parole was revoked and he was returned to prison. Thereafter, he sought to invalidate the parole revocation, first filing habeas petitions in state court, and then the present federal habeas petition. Before the District Court addressed the merits of the habeas petition, petitioner's sentence expired, and so the District Court dismissed the petition as moot. The Eighth Circuit affirmed.
Held: The expiration of petitioner's sentence has caused his petition to be moot because it no longer presents an Article III case or controversy. Pp. 7-18.
(a) An incarcerated convict's (or a parolee's) challenge to his conviction always satisfies the case-or-controversy requirement because the incarceration (or the restriction imposed by the terms of parole) constitutes a concrete injury caused by the conviction and redressable by the conviction's invalidation. Once the sentence has expired, however, the petitioner must show some concrete and continuing injury other than the now-ended incarceration (or parole)—some "collateral consequence" of the conviction—if the suit is to be maintained. In recent decades, this Court has presumed that a wrongful conviction has continuing col-1
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