Lackawanna County District Attorney v. Coss, 532 U.S. 394, 9 (2001)

Page:   Index   Previous  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  Next

402

LACKAWANNA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY v. COSS

Opinion of the Court

edly invalid prior [1986] conviction." Id., at 493. See also supra, at 399-400. Accordingly, Coss satisfies § 2254's "in custody" requirement. Cf. Daniels, ante, at 383, 384, n. 2 (stating that the text of § 2255, which also contains an "in custody" requirement, is broad enough to cover a claim that a current sentence enhanced by an allegedly unconstitutional prior conviction violates due process).

B

More important for our purposes here is the question we explicitly left unanswered in Maleng: "the extent to which the [prior expired] conviction itself may be subject to challenge in the attack upon the [current] senten[ce] which it was used to enhance." 490 U. S., at 494. We encountered this same question in the § 2255 context in Daniels v. United States, ante, p. 374. We held there that "[i]f . . . a prior conviction used to enhance a federal sentence is no longer open to direct or collateral attack in its own right because the defendant failed to pursue those remedies while they were available (or because the defendant did so unsuccessfully), then that defendant . . . may not collaterally attack his prior conviction through a motion under § 2255." Ante, at 382. We now extend this holding to cover § 2254 petitions directed at enhanced state sentences.

We grounded our holding in Daniels on considerations relating to the need for finality of convictions and ease of administration. Those concerns are equally present in the § 2254 context. The first and most compelling interest is in the finality of convictions. Once a judgment of conviction is entered in state court, it is subject to review in multiple forums. Specifically, each State has created mechanisms for both direct appeal and state postconviction review, see L. Yackle, Postconviction Remedies §§ 1, 13 (1981 and Supp. 2000), even though there is no constitutional mandate that they do so, see Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U. S. 551, 557 (1987) (no constitutional right to state postconviction

Page:   Index   Previous  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007