Opinion ID: 787967
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Which incidents?

Text: 31 Having decided which general theories Johnson may pursue, we turn next to examining which events he has exhausted. 32 Johnson's claim is that prison officials failed to protect him, over the course of some eighteen months, from near-constant sexual assault. Johnson's complaint, and his summary-judgment evidence, covers the repeated abuses in uncomfortable detail and lists many unsuccessful encounters with prison officials. These include face-to-face encounters with several guards who allegedly failed to take steps to protect Johnson on various occasions, correspondence with supervisory officials, and meetings with UCC committees. The defendants contend that the only exhausted claims in this case are those against two defendants, Wathen and Kuyava, as regards their involvement in the March 16, 2001 UCC. They reason that since TDCJ rules require that a Step 1 grievance be filed within fifteen days of the complained-of event, a grievance can only exhaust claims that relate to matters that occurred within the preceding fifteen days. Therefore, Johnson's March 18 Step 1 grievance could exhaust claims arising from the March 16, 2001 UCC, but it could not exhaust any claims that arise from conduct before March 2001. Johnson's December 2001 Step 1 grievance, which was also appealed through Step 2, failed to exhaust any claims, continue the defendants, because no UCC meeting occurred in the fifteen days preceding the filing of that Step 1 grievance. 33 Johnson did not use the formal grievance process — or, rather, he did not properly use it by both filing a Step 1 grievance and appealing the grievance to Step2 — until his March 18, 2001 Step 1 grievance. We agree with the defendants that Johnson has not exhausted any claims that arise from events that occurred more than fifteen days before this grievance. While it is true that the conditions that Johnson suffered both before and after the grievance were of the same general character, to permit the March 2001 grievance to reach back to events that transpired up to six months earlier would effectively negate the state's fifteen-day rule and frustrate the prison system's legitimate interest in investigating complaints while they are still fresh. That a condition continues does not excuse the failure to file a grievance earlier. Accordingly, we hold that Johnson's grievances do not permit him to pursue claims regarding conduct that occurred before March 2001; in particular, this means that he has not exhausted claims related to the UCC meetings of September 6, 2000, December 13, 2000, February 14, 2001, and February 21, 2001; nor has he exhausted claims regarding his encounters with Willingham, which all occurred before March 2001. 10 34 Having concluded that Johnson's March 2001 grievance did not exhaust claims that involve events before the March 2001 UCC meeting, we next consider whether Johnson has exhausted claims related to conduct that occurred after the March 2001 grievance. The defendants contend that no such claims were exhausted because none of the three subsequent UCC meetings at which Johnson was denied protection — which occurred in September 2001, December 2001, and January 2002 — was followed within fifteen days by a Step 1 grievance. In particular, Johnson's December 30, 2001 Step 1 grievance was a few days too late to reach the December 2001 UCC meeting, which was held on the 13th. 35 We do not agree with the defendants' argument that Johnson has not exhausted any claims that arise from events later than the March 16, 2001 UCC meeting. The March 2001 grievance alerted prison officials to the fact that Johnson was being subjected to repeated assaults and was not receiving any protection from the system, in particular a transfer to safekeeping status: 36 I am writing to state that I am a homosexual who and [sic] is still being assaulted sexually, physically, mentally. I have brought this issue up to unit administration a number of times and have failed to be moved to a safe location that houses other homosexuals.... Get me off this building or this unit before I am assaulted again.... I have used all the proper channels to resolve this problem but they simply refuse to listen. Please get the warden or U.C.C. to move me off this building.... They have failed to provide me safety. 37 The grievance investigation worksheet corresponding to this Step 1 grievance summarizes the issue as being assaulted, and the administration responded to Johnson's grievance by writing that a UCC had already been convened in response to Johnson's life-endangerment notices and had found his claims insufficient. (That is, administrators did not take Johnson's grievance as a complaint about only the prior UCC per se, 11 but rather they viewed the UCC as part of their response to the problem of being attacked.) After the officials rejected Johnson's grievance, the same condition of confinement of which he had been complaining continued. 38 After one full trip through the two-step review process, Johnson later filed the December 30, 2001 Step 1 grievance, which, according to the defendants, exhausted nothing because the most recent prior UCC was on December 13, more than fifteen days earlier. In this grievance Johnson reports that he is still constantly being threatened and harassed, that he is subject to being bought and sold by gang members, and that he has not been moved despite asking the staff and the UCCs for help numerous times. Notably, the prison administration did not reject this grievance as being an untimely attempt to grieve the results of the December 13 UCC. Cf. Gates v. Cook, 376 F.3d 323, 331 & n. 6 (5th Cir.2004) (holding that prison officials could not argue that a prisoner's grievance failed to comply with procedural rules when the officials had looked past the purported technical defect and rejected the grievance for substantive reasons); accord Riccardo v. Rausch, 375 F.3d 521, 523-24 (7th Cir. 2004). Rather, their internal documents portrayed this grievance as another complaint about being attacked, and the administration rejected it on the ground that they had already answered Johnson's complaints about safety in their response to a prior Step 1 grievance that was filed shortly before the December 13 UCC meeting. Thus, the prison administration itself evidently did not understand Johnson's grievance as a complaint about the December 13 UCC meeting in particular, but instead as a complaint about a continued lack of protection. 12 39 As a practical matter, Johnson could not have been expected to file a new grievance every fifteen days, or each time he was assaulted (which, according to him, was virtually every day), for the entire period during which he remained unprotected in the general population. Persuasive authority holds that, in such circumstances, prisoners need not continue to file grievances about the same issue. See Sulton v. Wright, 265 F.Supp.2d 292, 295-99 (S.D.N.Y.2003) (holding that two grievances filed during the course of a several-year period of repeated delays in treating an inmate's injured knee sufficed to exhaust the entire course of conduct, despite the prison system's rule that grievances must be filed within fourteen days of an occurrence); Aiello v. Litscher, 104 F.Supp.2d 1068, 1074 (W.D.Wis.2000) (holding that when inmates have filed a grievance regarding a prison policy, they need not file grievances regarding subsequent incidents in which the policy is applied); cf. Lewis v. Washington, 197 F.R.D. 611, 614 (N.D.Ill.2000) (holding that inmates complaining about various aspects of the conditions in their housing unit need only grieve their placement in that unit, not each of the various alleged unconstitutional conditions present in the unit; [o]therwise the defendants could obstruct legal remedies to unconstitutional actions by subdividing the grievances....). Further, the TDCJ rules specifically direct prisoners not to file repetitive grievances about the same issue and hold out the threat of sanctions for excessive use of the grievance process. It would make little sense to require a prisoner being subjected to a frigid cell to continue to file grievances stating that the cell remains frigid, and the same principle applies here. Cf. Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294, 303, 111 S.Ct. 2321, 115 L.Ed.2d 271 (1991) (referring to the temperature he is subjected to in his cell, and the protection he is afforded against other inmates both as conditions of confinement subject to the Eighth Amendment). 40 Given the circumstances of this case and the nature of Johnson's complaint, we do not believe that he was required to file repeated grievances reminding the prison officials that he remained subject to attack in the general population. Johnson's grievances were sufficient to exhaust claims that arose from the same continuing failure to protect him from sexual assault. Thus, we disagree with the defendants' suggestion that he has failed to exhaust any claims relating to the September 2001, December 2001, and January 2002 UCC meetings. 13 41