Skinner v. Switzer

Background

A man convicted in Texas of murdering his girlfriend and her two sons sought DNA testing of untested crime-scene items (knives, an axe handle, vaginal swabs, fingernail clippings, and hairs) that remained in the prosecutor’s custody. He twice asked the state court under Texas’s Article 64 statute for postconviction DNA testing and was denied. He then filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the local district attorney, claiming Texas’s postconviction procedures denied him procedural due process. Lower federal courts dismissed his suit, treating DNA-testing requests as matters for habeas petitions, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed.

Reasoning

The Court framed the key question as whether a prisoner may pursue DNA testing by suing under federal civil-rights law or must proceed only in a federal habeas petition. Relying on prior cases, the Court explained that habeas is the exclusive route when a judgment would necessarily imply invalidity of the conviction, but that a claim which only seeks access to evidence and would not necessarily overturn a conviction can proceed under a civil-rights suit. The Court held that ordering DNA tests would not inevitably show the conviction invalid, so the prisoner may bring a procedural due process claim under the civil-rights statute. The Court also rejected arguments that the suit was barred by rules preventing federal review of state-court judgments and noted Osborne’s limits on substantive due-process claims about DNA access. The Court reversed the Fifth Circuit and remanded for further proceedings, without deciding the merits of the due-process claim.

Real world impact

The ruling permits convicted people who cannot prove immediate invalidity of their convictions to seek federal civil-rights suits for DNA testing of evidence. It affects prosecutors who control evidence and federal courts that will now decide such access claims; the decision does not finally order testing and leaves merits issues for lower courts.

Dissents or concurrances

The dissent argued that challenges to state collateral review procedures belong in habeas, warning federalism and comity concerns and that civil-rights suits would allow collateral attack around Congress’s limits on federal habeas.