Cite as: 523 U. S. 1 (1998)
Ginsburg, J., concurring
§ 1983 if brought by a convict free of custody (as, in this case, following service of a full term of imprisonment), when exactly the same claim could be redressed if brought by a former prisoner who had succeeded in cutting his custody short through habeas.*
The better view, then, is that a former prisoner, no longer "in custody," may bring a § 1983 action establishing the un-constitutionality of a conviction or confinement without being bound to satisfy a favorable-termination requirement that it would be impossible as a matter of law for him to satisfy. Thus, the answer to Spencer's argument that his habeas claim cannot be moot because Heck bars him from relief under § 1983 is that Heck has no such effect. After a prisoner's release from custody, the habeas statute and its exhaustion requirement have nothing to do with his right to any relief.
Justice Ginsburg, concurring.
The Court held in Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U. S. 477 (1994), that a state prisoner may not maintain an action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 if the direct or indirect effect of granting relief would be to invalidate the state sentence he is serving. I joined the Court's opinion in Heck. Mindful of "real-life example[s]," among them this case, cf. 512 U. S., at 490, n. 10, I have come to agree with Justice Souter's reasoning: Individuals without recourse to the habeas statute because they are not "in custody" (people merely fined or whose sentences have been fully served, for example) fit within § 1983's "broad reach." See id., at 503 (Souter, J., concurring in judgment); cf. Henslee v. Union Planters Nat. Bank & Trust
*The convict given a fine alone, however onerous, or sentenced to a term too short to permit even expeditious litigation without continuances before expiration of the sentence, would always be ineligible for § 1983 relief. See Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U. S. 477, 500 (1994) (Souter, J., concurring in judgment).
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