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Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted September 2, 2015*

Decided October 7, 2015 

Before 

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge 

RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge 

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

No. 14-3042 

MAURICE JACKSON, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

MATTHEW HOFFMAN, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of Illinois. 

No. 12-cv-0233-MJR-SCW 

Michael J. Reagan, 

Chief Judge. 

O R D E R 

Maurice Jackson, an inmate at the Menard Correctional Center in Illinois, 

brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging various constitutional violations after 

suffering a beating in prison. The district court granted summary judgment for the 

defendants, finding that Jackson failed to exhaust his administrative remedies before 

suing. Because the district court’s findings are not clearly erroneous and exhaustion is a 

prerequisite to filing suit, we affirm the judgment. 

 

*

 After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral 

argument is unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record.

See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 

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No. 14-3042 Page 2 

Jackson alleges that, after discovering him trying to commit suicide, more than a 

dozen officers severely beat him and denied him medical care. During the attack, he 

says, they punched him in the face, slammed his head into the wall, pushed him down 

onto the floor, and ripped off his clothes. Additionally, Jackson asserts that one officer 

created a noose from a torn sheet and wrapped it around Jackson’s neck, another called 

him a “nigger” and “black monkey,” and yet another rubbed his penis on Jackson’s 

buttocks. After the incident, Jackson alleges, he did not receive medical treatment and 

instead was forced to spend three nights in segregation with only a urine-soaked 

mattress and no sheets or blankets. Then, when lower back pain necessitated a visit to a 

nurse, Jackson says the nurse simply laughed and sent him back to segregation for three 

more nights. Jackson avers that over the following weeks he repeatedly requested and 

was denied medical care. 

As serious as these allegations are, a federal court cannot adjudicate them if, as 

the defendants assert, Jackson has not exhausted his available administrative remedies. 

See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a); Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 85 (2006); Thomas v. Reese, 787 F.3d 

845, 847 (7th Cir. 2015). Jackson attached to his complaint copies of several grievances 

that he contends he sent to various officials, who he says never responded. The 

defendants moved for summary judgment on the ground that Jackson had in fact not 

filed these grievances and thus had not exhausted. They furnished grievance logs and 

records of counseling sessions to show that during the relevant time frame they 

received grievances from other inmates but not Jackson, despite his successful filing of 

unrelated grievances on other dates. The defendants also pointed out omissions and 

inconsistencies in Jackson’s assertions. First, none of the grievances attached to 

Jackson’s complaint contained a counselor’s response or any kind of “received” stamp. 

Second, at least one grievance was dated before the dates of the incidents described in 

the grievance itself. 

The magistrate judge conducted two evidentiary hearings on the exhaustion 

defense. See Pavey v. Conley, 544 F.3d 739, 742 (7th Cir. 2008). Jackson testified that his 

grievances are unstamped because he made copies of them before he gave them to 

prison officials; if the right person never received his grievances, he surmised, the 

various prison officials to whom he sent the grievances must have conspired to destroy 

them. Jackson attempted to answer the criticism that one grievance was dated before 

the dates of incidents described within it. At his first hearing he said that he dated the 

grievance when he first started drafting it and then included incidents from later dates 

because he had not yet filed the form. At the second hearing he said that he 

“accidentally” had included the later incidents. The magistrate judge ruled that Jackson 

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had not exhausted. He considered Jackson’s testimony not credible, relying instead on 

the defendants’ records showing that Jackson had not filed any grievances during the 

relevant period. Jackson objected to the magistrate judge’s report, but the district judge 

adopted the recommendation and granted summary judgment for the defendants. 

On appeal Jackson maintains that he properly filed the grievances and insists 

that factual disputes must be resolved by a jury. But the district court, not a jury, must 

resolve the exhaustion issue at a Pavey hearing. See Wagoner v. Lemmon, 778 F.3d 586, 

590–91 (7th Cir. 2015); Pavey, 544 F.3d at 741–42. And we review for clear error the 

district court’s findings that Jackson’s testimony was not credible and that he did not 

file his grievances. See FED. R. CIV. P. 52(a)(6); Pavey v. Conley, 663 F.3d 899, 904 (7th Cir. 

2011). The district court here faced two contradictory stories; it was not required to 

believe either one. Because the prison’s grievance records showed no exhaustion, and 

Jackson’s documents were unstamped and contained some discrepancies, it was 

acceptable for the court to credit the defendants’ version of events over Jackson’s. 

See United States v. Rice, 673 F.3d 537, 540 (7th Cir. 2012) (factual findings are not clearly 

erroneous when a district court “chooses between two permissible inferences from the 

evidence”); United States v. Collins, 604 F.3d 481, 486 (7th Cir. 2010) (same). The finding 

that Jackson had not exhausted his administrative remedies was therefore not clearly 

erroneous. 

Accordingly, the judgment is AFFIRMED. 

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