Court Opinion

ID: 9896688
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-14 01:00:35.89753+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:12.259985
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-60485        Document: 00516965265             Page: 1      Date Filed: 11/13/2023

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

                                      No. 22-60485                                    FILED
                                                                              November 13, 2023
                                    Summary Calendar
                                    ____________                                 Lyle W. Cayce
                                                                                      Clerk
   Dean C. Boyd,

                                                                    Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                            versus

   Vickie Thomas; N.P. Miranda Shegog; P.A. Shauna
   Nguyen; Shirley Harris; M.D. James Glisson; Sergeant
   Williams; Officer Sanders; Willie Knighten,

                                              Defendants—Appellees.
                     ______________________________

                     Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Northern District of Mississippi
                               USDC No. 4:22-CV-113
                     ______________________________

   Before Dennis, Elrod, and Willett, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam: *
         Dean C. Boyd, Mississippi prisoner # 167698, appeals the dismissal
   without prejudice of his civil rights complaint for failure to exhaust
   administrative remedies.

         _____________________
         *
             This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-60485      Document: 00516965265          Page: 2    Date Filed: 11/13/2023

                                    No. 22-60485

          Liberally construed, Boyd’s brief contends that the district court erred
   by dismissing his claims without first holding an evidentiary hearing; the
   district court incorrectly dismissed his claims for failure to exhaust
   administrative remedies because he pursued his grievances to their
   conclusion; and his substantive claims were meritorious.
          Regarding his claim that the district court failed to first hold an
   evidentiary hearing, Boyd has failed to meaningfully brief the argument and
   has therefore abandoned the issue. See Yohey v. Collins, 985 F.2d 222, 224-
   25 (5th Cir. 1993).
          Next, Boyd claims that he complied with the Mississippi Department
   of Corrections’ Administrative Remedy Program procedure by submitting
   corrected versions of the grievances within the requisite time period after
   they were rejected. However, Boyd did not make this argument in his
   responses to the defendants’ motions to dismiss or for summary judgment.
   He did not make any allegation that he timely resubmitted corrected
   grievances until after final judgment was entered, and, when he did do so, the
   allegation was not accompanied by any evidence. Boyd offered nothing more
   than “conclusional allegations and unsubstantiated assertions,” on which he
   may not rely as evidence. Carnaby v. City of Houston, 636 F.3d 183, 187 (5th
   Cir. 2011). To the extent that he argues on appeal that, contrary to the
   district court’s conclusion, he did name Willie Knighten in grievance MSP-
   20-1271, this is unsupported by anything in the record other than Boyd’s bald
   assertion.
          Boyd also contends that simply filing a grievance, even if procedurally
   defective, was sufficient to comply with state procedural requirements.
   However, he does not explicitly argue, and there is nothing in the record
   which indicates, that any of the three circumstances under which “an
   administrative remedy, although officially on the books, is not capable of use

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Case: 22-60485      Document: 00516965265          Page: 3    Date Filed: 11/13/2023

                                    No. 22-60485

   to obtain relief” is present in this case. Huskey v. Jones, 45 F.4th 827, 831
   (5th Cir. 2022) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Unlike the
   prisoner in Huskey, Boyd has not contended, either in the district court or on
   appeal, that he was not given documents which fully explained the grievance
   process or that the administrative process was so opaque it was unusable. See
   id. at 829-30.    Moreover, although Boyd claims he submitted revised
   grievances following rejection, there is no evidence in the record that he
   actually did so but that his attempt was rejected. See id. at 829.
          The district court did not err in dismissing Boyd’s claims for failure to
   exhaust administrative remedies. Accordingly, we need not address Boyd’s
   argument that his substantive claims were meritorious. The judgment of the
   district court is AFFIRMED.

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