Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-casd-3_15-cv-02280/USCOURTS-casd-3_15-cv-02280-3/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 42:1983pr Prisoner Civil Rights

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

KARL J. RUSSELL,

Plaintiff,

Case No. 15-cv-02280-BAS-KSC

ORDER: 

(1)GRANTING MOTION TO 

DISMISS [ECF No. 79]

AND

(2)GRANTING MOTION FOR 

SUMMARY JUDGMENT

[ECF No. 78]

v.

RICHARD LOPEZ, et al.,

Defendants.

Plaintiff, an inmate at R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility (“Donovan”) claims 

that Correctional Officers Lopez and Strong gave him an “unwarranted beating” 

resulting in excessive force in violation of the Eighth Amendment. (ECF No. 21 

at 3.)1 Defendants Lopez and Strong move to dismiss alleging the claim is barred 

by Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994). (ECF No. 79.) Defendants further 

move for summary judgment for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. (ECF 

 

1 All other Defendants in the First Amended Complaint have been dismissed by 

Plaintiff from the lawsuit. (ECF Nos. 51, 87.)

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No. 78.) Plaintiff opposes. (ECF Nos. 81, 82, 91.)2 For the reasons stated below, 

the Court grants both the motion to dismiss (ECF No. 79) and the motion for 

summary judgment (ECF No. 78).

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

A. Underlying Altercation

Plaintiff alleges Correctional Officers Lopez and Strong gave him an 

“unwarranted beating.” (ECF No. 21 at 3.) He attaches numerous documents to his 

Complaint detailing an altercation that occurred between him and the Officers on 

February 18, 2015. (ECF No. 21 at 18–23.) According to Plaintiff’s statements 

attached to his Complaint, he was asked by Officer Lopez to “cuff up.” (ECF No. 21 

at 69.) When he asked Officer Lopez why and “was trying to understand what 

[Officer Lopez] was talking about,” Officer Lopez “then grabbed me and threw me 

to the floor.” (Id.) Other officers were called in to help “subdue” Plaintiff and 

“helped [Officer Lopez] to beat on me with their fists against my head until I was at 

the point of blacking out.” (Id.) Plaintiff claims “their [sic] was No reason for the 

type of force upon my person.” (Id. (emphasis original).)

Plaintiff was charged with battery on Officer Lopez in connection with this 

incident. (ECF No. 21 at 153.) He pled guilty to Penal Code sections 664 and 69 

(attempting to obstruct or resist on executive officer in the performance of his 

 

2 To the extent Plaintiff asks the Court to “grant a motion to continue and to 

allow Plaintiff time to finish 602 appeal,” (ECF No. 91), that request is denied. 

Defendants’ motions were filed on September 27, 2017. Plaintiff filed his first 

response on November 17, 2017. (ECF Nos. 81, 82.) On December 8, 2017, the 

Court allowed Plaintiff additional time, until February 20, 2018, to file additional 

authorities. (ECF No. 83.) Plaintiff then requested additional time to file a surreply, 

which the Court granted. (ECF No. 90.) Plaintiff was given until April 20, 2018 to 

file a surreply, but he was told no further requests for extension of time would be 

granted absent exigent circumstances. (Id.) Plaintiff then filed his surreply, but asks 

for an additional continuance. (ECF No. 91.) The Court has given Plaintiff seven 

months to file two sets of responses to the motions. Plaintiff fails to present any 

reason, let alone exigent circumstances, for the request. Therefore, it is denied.

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duties). (ECF No. 21 at 157–159.) As part of the factual basis for his plea, Plaintiff 

admitted that he “unlawfully ma[de] an attempt to resist/delay an officer performing 

his lawful duties by force.” (ECF No. 21 at 159.)

B. Administrative Appeal

Plaintiff filed a grievance alleging that Officers Lopez and Strong attacked 

him on February 18, 2015, and that they used excessive force. (Declaration of B. 

Self, ECF No. 78-2 (“Self Decl.”) ¶7a.) The grievance was partially granted, on the 

claims of excessive force, for the second level of review. (Id.) However, the appeal 

was screened out at the third level because it was incomplete. (Self Decl. ¶7a.)3 

Specifically, Plaintiff was notified that “[y]our appeal has been rejected . . . . Your 

appeal is missing necessary supporting documents . . . . you may obtain cop(ies) of 

requested documents by sending request with a signed trust withdrawal form to your 

assigned counselor.” (Declaration of M. Voong, ECF No. 78-3 (“Voong Decl.”) ¶9, 

Ex. 1.) Plaintiff was specifically told that the appeal was missing CDCR Form 1858, 

Rights and Responsibilities Statement. (Id.) There is no evidence that Plaintiff 

followed up after this level of appeal was rejected.

In his Response to the Motion for Summary Judgment, Plaintiff claims that “I 

was harassed by staff and threaten physically and mentally not to engage in 602 or 

any other complaint towards these officers. I was also threaten by these officers not 

to take this case to trial and to sign the plea deal, or they will personally or get coworkers to ‘get me’ somehow.” (ECF No. 81 at 1.)

II. ANALYSIS

A. Motion to Dismiss

1. Legal Standard

A motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil 

 

3 Plaintiff also filed a grievance raising the same issue two days after the one 

referenced above. This second appeal was cancelled because it was duplicative of the 

above grievance. (Self Decl. ¶7b.)

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Procedure tests the legal sufficiency of the claims asserted in the complaint. FED. R.

CIV. P. 12(b)(6); Navarro v. Block, 250 F.3d 729, 731 (9th Cir. 2001). The court 

must accept all factual allegations pleaded in the complaint as true and must construe 

them and draw all reasonable inferences from them in favor of the nonmoving party. 

Cahill v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 80 F.3d 336, 337-38 (9th Cir. 1996). Courts may not 

usually consider material outside the complaint when ruling on a motion to dismiss. 

Hal Roach Studios, Inc. v. Richard Feiner & Co., 896 F.2d 1542, 1555 n.19 (9th Cir. 

1990). However, documents specifically identified in the complaint whose 

authenticity is not questioned by parties may also be considered. Fecht v. Price Co., 

70 F.3d 1078, 1080 n.1 (9th Cir. 1995), superseded by statute on other grounds. 

Plaintiff attaches several documents to his Complaint, which the Court will consider 

as part of this motion. 

2. Heck v. Humphrey

Under Heck v. Humphrey, a civil rights claim is disallowed if rendering a 

judgment for a plaintiff would necessarily imply that a previous conviction or 

sentence is invalid. 512 U.S. 477, 489 (1994). This rule has also been invoked in 

prison disciplinary hearings involving good-time credits. Edwards v. Balisok, 520 

U.S. 641, 648 (1997). However, when a civil rights claim does not necessarily 

implicate the underlying disciplinary action, it may proceed. See Muhammad v. 

Close, 540 U.S. 749, 754–55 (2004). 

In Cunningham v. Gates, 312 F.3d 1148 (9th Cir. 2002), the Ninth Circuit 

found that Heck barred a prisoner, convicted of felony murder and resisting arrest, 

from bringing his civil rights excessive force claim because his underlying 

conviction required proof of an “intentional provocative act” which was defined as 

“not in self-defense.” Cunningham, 312 F.3d at 1152. Essentially, a finding that the 

police used unreasonable force while effecting the plaintiff’s arrest, the court held, 

would “call into question” the validity of factual disputes which had necessarily 

already been resolved in the criminal action against him. Id. at 1154.

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However, in Smith v. City of Hemet, 394 F.3d 689 (9th Cir. 2000), the Ninth 

Circuit considered whether a prisoner’s excessive force allegations were barred by 

Heck after pleading guilty to resisting arrest pursuant to California Penal Code 

§148(a)(1). The Smith court reasoned:

A conviction based on conduct that occurred before the officers 

commence the process of arresting the defendant is not “necessarily” 

rendered invalid by the officers’ subsequent use of excessive force . . . . 

Similarly, excessive force used after a defendant has been arrested may 

properly be the subject of a §1983 action notwithstanding the 

defendant’s conviction on a charge of resisting an arrest that was itself 

lawfully conducted.

Id. at 696 (emphasis original). Accordingly, the Smith court found that 

“Smith’s §1983 action is not barred . . . because the excessive force may have been 

employed against him subsequent to the time he engaged in the conduct that 

constituted the basis for his conviction.” Id. at 693. Under the circumstances, the 

Ninth Circuit held that Smith’s Section 1983 action “neither demonstrated nor 

necessarily implied the invalidity of his conviction.” Id.; see also Sanford v. Motts, 

258 F.3d 1117, 1120 (9th Cir. 2001) (“If [the officer] used excessive force 

subsequent to the time Sanford interfered with [the officer’s] duty, success in her 

section 1983 claim will not invalidate her conviction. Heck is no bar.”).

In this case, Plaintiff pled guilty to violating California Penal Code Section 

69 in his altercation with Officer Lopez. (ECF No. 21 at 153–159.) Section 69 has 

two prongs. First, it prohibits an attempt “by means of any threat or violence, to 

deter or prevent an executive officer from performing any duty imposed upon the 

officer by law.” CAL. PEN. CODE §69(a). Second, it prohibits anyone from 

“knowingly resist[ing] by the use of force or violence, the officer, in the performance 

of his or her duty.” Id. “The longstanding rule in California and other jurisdictions 

is that a defendant cannot be convicted of an offense against a peace officer ‘engaged 

in . . . the performance of . . . [his or her] duties’ unless the officer was acting lawfully 

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at the time the offense against the officer was committed.” In re Manuel G., 941 

P.2d 880, 885 (Cal. 1997) (quoting People v. Gonzalez, 800 P.2d 1159, 1217 (Cal. 

1990) (italics omitted)). “If, however, a statute defining an offense does not require 

that the officer be engaged in the performance of his or her duties, the officer need 

not have been acting lawfully at the time of the offense.” Id. at 886. The first prong 

of Section 69 only prohibits the use of threats to attempt to deter the officer from 

performing any duty imposed by law. Id. Thus, the first prong does not require that 

the officer be lawfully engaged in the performance of his or her duties at the time 

the threat is made. Id. at 887. However, the second prong specifically requires that 

the officer be lawfully performing his duties at the time the defendant knowingly 

resists with force or violence. Id. at 886. Thus, the applicability of Heck v. 

Humphrey to Plaintiff’s Section 69 conviction depends on the prong to which 

Plaintiff pleaded guilty. 

A look at the factual basis underlying Plaintiff’s plea make clear that he 

pleaded guilty to the second prong. (ECF No. 21 at 159.) In pleading guilty to the 

second prong, Plaintiff admitted that the Officers in the February 18th incident were 

acting lawfully—and thus, without excessive force—at the time he attempted to 

resist them. A finding that Officers Lopez and Strong used excessive force while 

handcuffing Plaintiff would, in effect, invalidate Plaintiff’s admission and 

conviction for resisting an officer in the performance of his duties.4 Unlike Smith v. 

City of Hemet, where the Plaintiff had a string of encounters and actions any one of 

which could have been the one resulting in the resisting arrest conviction, in this 

case, Plaintiff alleges only one altercation in which the officers attempted to 

handcuff him. Hence, under Heck v. Humphrey, the Complaint must be dismissed.

 

4 Plaintiff requests that his sentence in the state case for resisting, in violation 

of California Penal Code §69, be “recalled,” but that is not an appropriate request in 

this court action.

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B. Motion for Summary Judgment

1. Legal Standard

Failure to exhaust administrative remedies is an affirmative defense more 

appropriately handled in a Motion for Summary Judgment. Albino v. Baca, 747 F.3d 

1162, 1166 (9th Cir. 2014). “If undisputed evidence viewed in the light most 

favorable to the prisoner shows a failure to exhaust, a defendant is entitled to 

summary judgment under Rule 56. If material facts are disputed, summary judgment 

should be denied, and the district judge rather than a jury should determine the facts.” 

Id. A defendant has the burden to prove that there was an administrative remedy 

available and that the prisoner did not exhaust that available remedy. Id. at 1171. 

The burden then shifts to the prisoner to show “something in his particular case that 

made existing and generally available administrative remedies unavailable to him.” 

Id. at 1172. Even so, the ultimate burden of showing entitlement to summary 

judgment for failure to exhaust administrative remedies remains with the defendant. 

Id.

2. Failure to Exhaust Administrative Remedies

The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (“PLRA”) requires exhausting of 

available administrative remedies before bringing a federal case under Section 1983. 

42 U.S.C. §1957e(a). Exhaustion is mandatory and the failure to exhaust 

administrative remedies requires the district court to dismiss the complaint. 

Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 83 (2006). Fully pursuing administrative remedies 

gives prison authorities an opportunity to correct their own mistakes and promotes 

efficiency. Id. at 89. 

“The California Department of Corrections provides a four-step grievance 

process for prisoners who seek review of an administrative decision or perceived 

mistreatment: an informal level, a first formal level, a second formal level, and the 

Director’s level.” Vaden v. Summerhill, 449 F.3d 1047, 1048–49 (9th Cir. 2005) 

(citing Brown v. Valoft, 422 F.3d 926, 929–30 (9th Cir. 2005)). Each of these levels 

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must be pursued for a prisoner in the California prison system to exhaust 

administrative remedies. Id. 

The exhaustion requirement “may . . . be excused under certain limited 

circumstances where the intervening actions or conduct by prison official render the 

inmate grievance procedure unavailable.” McBride v. Lopez, 807 F.3d 982, 984 (9th 

Cir. 2015). “[F]ear of retaliation may be sufficient to render the inmate grievance 

procedure unavailable.” Id. In order for a prisoner to show that he failed to exhaust 

administrative remedies because of the fear of retaliation, the prisoner must first 

“provide a basis for the court to find that he actually believed prison officials would 

retaliate against him if he filed a grievance.” Id. at 987. “If the prisoner makes this 

showing, he must then demonstrate that his belief was objectively reasonable. That 

is, there must be some basis in the record for the district court to conclude that a 

reasonable prisoner of ordinary firmness would have believed that the prison 

official’s action communicated a threat not to use the prison’s grievance procedure 

and that the threatened retaliation was of sufficient severity to deter a reasonable 

prisoner from filing a grievance.” Id.

In this case, defendants have met their burden of showing that the four-level 

grievance procedure was available to Plaintiff and that he did not exhaust that 

remedy because he abandoned the Director’s level of review when it was returned 

to him as missing certain documents. (“Voong Decl.”) ¶9, Ex. 1.) Plaintiff’s 

response to this argument appears to be three-fold: (1) he argues that he was 

threatened by officers not to engage in the appeal process (ECF No. 81 at 1); (2) he 

claims that he can prove that he sent the 602 appeal to the Director’s level “regardless 

of the outcome” and thus he exhausted administrative remedies (ECF No. 91 at 3); 

and (3) he asks for a continuance to allow him time to finish his 602 appeal. (ECF 

No. 91 at 4.) Each of these arguments is not supported by any evidence.

First, Plaintiff makes no allegations about specific threats of retaliation. And, 

in fact, any argument about fear of retaliation is belied by the fact that he did file a 

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grievance, which he pursued through to the second level of review. He then filed a 

federal lawsuit. Therefore, he has failed to show that he actually believed prison 

officials would retaliate against him if he filed a grievance, or that, if he did, this 

perception stopped him from pursuing his administrative remedies.

Second, although Plaintiff says he can prove that he did exhaust his 

administrative remedies, he fails to provide any evidence supporting this claim. It 

is clear from the record that he did appeal to the Director’s Level of review, but when 

the appeal was returned to him for additional documentary evidence, with 

instructions on how to obtain that documentary evidence, Plaintiff failed to pursue 

this avenue. Therefore, Defendants have met their burden of showing that Plaintiff 

failed to exhaust his administrative remedies.

Finally, Plaintiff asks for a continuance to allow him the opportunity to 

exhaust his administrative remedies and finish his 602 appeal. However, the Ninth 

Circuit has made it clear that exhaustion must be accomplished before filing a federal 

lawsuit and not while the lawsuit is pending. See Vaden v. Summerhill, 449 F.3d 

1047 (Because Vaden filed his federal complaint while his appeal was still pending 

at the Director’s level, his complaint must be dismissed.)

Defendants have met their burden of proving that Plaintiff failed to exhaust 

his administrative remedies, and Plaintiff has provided no evidence that something 

in this case made available administrative remedies unavailable to him. Therefore, 

Defendants are entitled to summary judgment.

III. CONCLUSION & ORDER 

Plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies and his claims are 

barred by Heck v. Humphrey. Therefore, Defendants’ motions to dismiss and for 

summary judgment are GRANTED. (ECF Nos. 78, 79.) Officers Lopez and Strong 

are both dismissed from the case with prejudice, and judgment is entered in their 

favor. Since they are the only two remaining defendants left in the case, the Clerk 

is directed to close this case. 

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IT IS SO ORDERED.

DATED: May 17, 2018

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