Will Baude

Getting out of jail requires you to bring a writ of habeas corpus, which is very hard to do because you have to exhaust your remedies.

There are other things.

There's now a statute of ed put that makes it hard that didn't even exist at the time of heck.

And so you think, aha, I've got a clever way to get around those things.

I will instead just sue the prosecutor or the judge or the police officer for arresting me for a crime I didn't commit or for giving me an unfair trial.

I'll win a lot of damages.

After all, if you were wrongfully imprisoned for years, presumably the appropriate damages would be very high.

and then they'll just let me out, or then once I win, I can use something called restriticata to make it easier on my habeas suit, et cetera.

So the Supreme Court said, in an opinion by Justice Scalia and Heck v. Sumphrey, you can't do that.

Yeah.

Yeah, so the correct way, the correct formal way to handle this would be through the doctrines of what are called the res judicata, which would say, we already litigated this question once.

Were you guilty?

And the answer was yes.

And we litigated the question, was your trial fair?

And the answer was yes, otherwise we wouldn't be here.

And the judgment in that case frequently, but not always, stops us from asking that question again.

The court says on a footnote, well, it's kind of complicated because you were convicted under state law, and so it would be state-restricted COTA law that would control.

That would vary from state to state.

We don't know what the answers would be, and that sounds boring and hard.

It's just like Winnell's civil procedure.