Court Opinion

ID: 9906762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-12-05 01:01:29.848654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:52:18.499867
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-30122         Document: 00516989018             Page: 1      Date Filed: 12/04/2023

              United States Court of Appeals
                   for the Fifth Circuit
                                                                                      United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                               Fifth Circuit

                                      ____________                                           FILED
                                                                                  December 4, 2023
                                       No. 22-30122                                     Lyle W. Cayce
                                      ____________                                           Clerk

   Donald Barnes,

                                                                     Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                             versus

   Darryl Vannoy, Warden; Peter Lollis, Major; John Maples,
   Major; Shawn Miller, Sergeant,

                                               Defendants—Appellees.
                      ______________________________

                      Appeal from the United States District Court
                          for the Middle District of Louisiana
                                USDC No. 3:19-CV-764
                      ______________________________

   Before Jones, Barksdale, and Elrod, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam: *
          Donald Barnes appeals the district court’s dismissal of his claims
   against several prison officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for failure to exhaust
   his administrative remedies.              Because we agree with Barnes that
   administrative relief became unavailable when his grievance was mistakenly

          _____________________
          *
              This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-30122        Document: 00516989018         Page: 2    Date Filed: 12/04/2023

                                     No. 22-30122

   rejected at the screening phase, leaving him with no way to pursue an
   administrative appeal, we REVERSE and REMAND.
                                           I
          Donald Barnes is a state prisoner incarcerated in the Louisiana State
   Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana.          In April 2019, he was placed in
   administrative lockdown, and assigned to a cell shared with Terrence
   Napoleon, who had killed another prisoner with a brick some weeks prior.
   Two nights after Barnes was placed in the cell, Napoleon cut Barnes’s throat.
   Barnes survived, and 82 days after he was attacked, he filed a grievance with
   the Warden’s Office asserting that several prison officials had been
   deliberately indifferent.
          Louisiana’s Administrative Remedy Procedure prescribes two steps
   that prisoners must take when using the grievance process. First, a formal
   grievance must be filed within 90 days of the complained-of incident. La.
   Admin. Code tit. 22, pt. 1, § 325(G)(1). Second, if the prisoner is not satisfied
   with the determination made at the first step, he may appeal to the secretary
   of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Id. § 325(J)(1)(b). But
   before any formal grievance is reviewed under the first step, it is first
   screened for deficiencies. Id. § 325(I).
          Having been filed within the 90-day window, Barnes’s grievance was
   timely. However, a screening officer mistakenly rejected the grievance as
   untimely, noting incorrectly that “THE DATE OF INCIDENT IS MORE
   THAN 90 DAYS PAST DUE.” All parties agree this was an error. By the
   time Barnes’s grievance was returned to him, over 90 days had passed since
   he was attacked.
          In November 2019, Barnes filed the instant lawsuit under 42 U.S.C.
   § 1983 against the named prison officials, claiming that they had violated his
   Eighth Amendment rights by failing to protect him from a known dangerous

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                                    No. 22-30122

   and violent offender. Appellees moved for summary judgment, arguing that
   Barnes had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. The district court
   granted Appellees’ motion and dismissed Barnes’s claims.
                                         II
          We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo,
   applying the same standards as the district court and viewing the evidence in
   the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Dillon v. Rogers, 596 F.3d
   260, 266 (5th Cir. 2010); Huskey v. Jones, 45 F.4th 827, 830 (5th Cir. 2022).
   Summary judgment is appropriate “if the movant shows that there is no gen-
   uine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as
   a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).
          Under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, prisoners may not
   bring any action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 “until such administrative remedies
   as are available are exhausted.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). “The petitioner must
   have ‘pursue[d] the grievance remedy to conclusion’—substantial
   compliance with administrative procedures is not enough.” Bargher v. White,
   928 F.3d 439, 447 (5th Cir. 2019) (quoting Wright v. Hollingsworth, 260 F.3d
   357, 358 (5th Cir. 2001)). The procedures that prisoners must follow “are
   defined not by the PLRA, but by the prison grievance process itself.” Jones
   v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 218 (2007); see also Wilson v. Epps, 776 F.3d 296, 299–
   300 (5th Cir. 2015).
          Louisiana’s Administrative Remedy Procedure, contained within the
   Louisiana Administrative Code, prescribes a two-step grievance process with
   an initial screening phase. “[A] prisoner has not exhausted his remedies until
   he has completed both” of those steps. Bargher, 928 F.3d at 447. But when
   a grievance is rejected at the screening phase, it cannot proceed further. La.
   Admin. Code tit. 22, pt. 1, § 325(I)(1)(c)(iii). Instead, “the offender must

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                                    No. 22-30122

   correct the noted deficiencies and resubmit the request to the ARP screening
   officer.” Id.
          Barnes did not exhaust his administrative remedies under the ARP’s
   plain terms. He did not proceed to the second step because his grievance was
   rejected at the screening phase, preventing him from appealing before he
   corrected the “noted deficiencies” in his grievance. Usually, our analysis
   would end there.
          However, the PLRA requires exhaustion only of “such administrative
   remedies as are available.”      42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (emphasis added).
   Accordingly, the Supreme Court has instructed that “an inmate is required
   to exhaust those, but only those, grievance procedures that are ‘capable of
   use’ to obtain ‘some relief for the action complained of.’” Ross v. Blake, 578
   U.S. 632, 642 (2016) (quoting Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 738 (2001)).
   For example, a remedy is unavailable when it is “essentially ‘unknowable’—
   so that no ordinary prisoner can make sense of what it demands.” Id. at 644
   (quoting Goebert v. Lee Cnty., 510 F.3d 1312, 1323 (11th Cir. 2007)); see also
   Goebert, 510 F.3d at 1322–23 (holding that where “there is nothing in [an
   inmate handbook] about any procedure for appealing the denial of a
   complaint,” that process is unknowable).
          Here, the ARP does not provide instruction to prisoners like Barnes
   whose otherwise-proper grievances are mistakenly rejected at the screening
   phase. They are expressly prohibited from appealing that determination, La.
   Admin. Code tit. 22, pt. 1, § 325(I)(1)(c)(iii), and even if some other avenue
   exists to correct the screening officer’s mistake, the ARP does not explain it.
   Further, had Barnes submitted a new grievance pointing out the mistake, that
   grievance would itself have fallen outside the ARP’s 90-day window. It
   would have been reasonable for him to believe that he could no longer submit
   a timely correction. Any remedy the ARP may have provided Barnes at that

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                                      No. 22-30122

   point was essentially unknowable, and he was not required to exhaust any
   such remedy.
          We stress that our holding is a narrow one confined to the facts before
   us. As Ross itself made clear, there is no “special circumstances” exception
   to the PLRA and prisoners should always “err on the side of exhaustion”
   when doubts arise. 578 U.S. at 641–42, 644. And we have previously held
   that “courts may not deem grievance procedures unavailable merely because
   an inmate was ignorant of them, so long as the inmate had a fair, reasonable
   opportunity to apprise himself of the procedures.” Huskey, 45 F.4th at 832
   (quoting Davis v. Fernandez, 798 F.3d 290, 295 (5th Cir. 2015)). But here,
   due to the mistake by the screening officer, Barnes had no such opportunity.
                                  *        *         *
          We REVERSE and REMAND for further proceedings consistent
   with this opinion.

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