Opinion
Case No. 00 C 1227
October 23, 2003
ORDER
In its order of June 11, 2003, the court dismissed prisoner Ali M. Ali's excessive force claim against correctional officer William de la Fuente for failure to exhaust administrative remedies as required by § 1997e(a) of the Prison Litigation Reform Act ("PLRA"), Plaintiff Ali now asks the court to reconsider its decision on the ground that he fully and timely exhausted a legitimate alternative administrative remedy, namely Cook County Department of Corrections General Order No. 4.1 ("G.O. 4.1"), prior to filing this action in federal court. For the reasons stated below, the court grants Ali's motion to reconsider and orders his case reinstated.
I. Background
The incident giving rise to Ali's § 1983 claim of excessive force against de la Fuente occurred on March 5, 1998, while Ali was detained in a Cook County Department of Corrections ("CCDOC") facility awaiting trial. That day a fire broke out near Ali's cell which required the emergency evacuation of Ali and other inmates to another part of the jail. Ali alleges that during the move de la Fuente beat him "without cause or provocation" "rendering him unconscious and causing other injuries." Ali required medical treatment in the county hospital and stitches to his head as a result of de la Fuente's beating.
Later that day Ali's father learned of the incident from another inmate and contacted the shift commander of Ali's unit to complain. On the advice of the shift commander, Ali's father called the assistant executive director of the CCDOC, John Maul, and lodged a complaint about de la Fuente's "use of excessive force while moving his son during an emergency situation." Maul told Ali's father that the CCDOC would conduct a full investigation into the incident, which it did. On April 17, 1998, after interviewing Ali and hearing the officers involved, the Internal Affairs Department ("IAD") determined that Ali's allegation of misconduct by officer de la Fuente was inconclusive and closed the investigation. Ali later filed a grievance about the incident but it was denied as untimely.
II. Discussion
The issue now before the court is whether Ali, by initiating and following to completion the IAD investigation of de la Fuente's misconduct pursuant to G.O. 4.1, satisfied the PLRA's exhaustion requirement. De la Fuente insists that Ali has not exhausted his administrative remedies because he did not timely file a grievance as required by the CCDOC's "Detainee Grievance Procedure" outlined in G.O. 14.5. Both G.O. 4.1 and 14.5 are current, effective operating procedures of the CCDOC enacted after the PLRA, but while G.O. 14.5 "provides detainees an internal grievance mechanism for resolving complaints arising from institutional matters," G.O. 4.1 governs only "complaints, investigations, and disciplinary actions against members of the department." The two procedures co-exist among the numerous and varied regulations of the CCDOC, sharing as one of their goals the detection, investigation, and correction of prison employee misconduct.
De la Fuente does not dispute that Ali complied fully with G.O. 4.1, only that 4.1 is not an acceptable alternative to G.O. 14.5's grievance procedures.
Even so, de la Fuente contends that G.0.14.5 is the exclusive grievance procedure available to prisoners complaining about all institutional matters, including prison employee misconduct, because it is titled the "detainee grievance procedure" and seems to have been enacted in response to the PLRA's exhaustion requirement, The court finds this argument unavailing, both because 14.5 does not contain any such language of exclusivity, and also because 4.1 expressly invites prisoners, as well as citizens and relatives of prisoners, to report incidents of prison employee misconduct to supervising or commanding officers for further investigation. If the CCDOC did not intend for prisoners to file complaints about officer misconduct through 4.1, it should have indicated that in the section pertaining to the source of complaints. And likewise, if the CCDOC intended 14.5 to be the exclusive manner by which prisoners could complain about officer misconduct, it should have said so in the regulation; instead, 14.5 contains permissive language, stating that "when a condition or action considered to be improper, unjust or discriminatory and grounds of detainee complaint exists" "a grievance may be processed" [emphasis added]. Thus, for the kind of complaint filed here, alleging the use of excessive force by an officer, the court concludes that the administrative procedures of both 4.1 and 14.5 are available remedies.
Next, the court must decide whether a prisoner like AH, who has two independent avenues of administrative procedure available to him, must follow one or both of them to their end to satisfy the PLRA's exhaustion requirement. In relevant part, the PLRA mandates that "No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under § 1983 . . . by a prisoner . . . until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted." 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). Though one purpose of the PLRA is to reduce the number of prisoner lawsuits filed in federal courts, Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 524 (2002), it has in fact spawned much litigation over the meaning and scope of its exhaustion requirement. These cases teach that there is no futility exception to the exhaustion requirement, Perez v. Wisconsin Dep't of Corr., 182 F.3d 532, 535-36 (7th Cir. 1999), that all inmate suits concerning prison life are subject to exhaustion, Nussle, 534 U.S. at 532, that exhaustion is required even if available administrative procedures cannot provide an adequate remedy, Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 734, 735 (2001), and that all grievances and appeals must be filed in the time, place, and manner designated by the prison's administrative rules, Pozo v. McCaughtry, 286 F.3d 1022, 1025 (7th Cir. 2002).
So there is no doubt that before Ali may bring his § 1983 claim to this court he must fully and timely comply with "such administrative remedies as are available" to him in the CCDOC regulations. See Pozo, 286 F.3d at 1023 ("unless the prisoner completes the administrative process by following the rules the state has established for that process, exhaustion has not occurred"). But the law is less clear with respect to whether "such administrative remedies as are available" means any and all available remedies or just one of any number of legitimate alternatives. Several courts have held that a prisoner may achieve exhaustion through alternative administrative channels, provided that the alternative remedy is officially recognized, such as by the supervising state agency or in the prisoner's handbook or as a local operating procedure. See, e.g., Concepcion v. Morton, 306 F.3d 1347, 1348 (3d Cir. 2002) (holding PLRA's exhaustion requirement satisfied by grievance procedure that was outlined in prisoners' handbook but was not formally promulgated by state agency); Camp v. Brennan, 219 F.3d 279, 281 (3d Cir. 2000) (finding exhaustion where prisoner followed alternative grievance procedure authorized by Office of Professional Responsibility but did not follow grievance procedure codified by Department of Corrections); 0'Connor v. Featherston, No. 01 CV 3251, 2003 WL 554752, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 27, 2003) (finding exhaustion where prisoner pursued alternative administrative remedy recommended by prison superintendent). But see Houze v. Segarra, 217 F. Supp.2d 394, 399 (S.D.N.Y. 2002) (finding no exhaustion where prisoner filed grievance with Office of Inspector General but did not also file grievance in accordance with state-promulgated procedures). Permitting a prisoner to pursue one legitimate administrative remedy instead of another not only facilitates a central purpose of the PLRA's exhaustion requirement, affording prison officials the opportunity to investigate and correct inmate complaints internally before the case goes to court, Nussle, 534 U.S. at 525, it also provides flexibility to prison officials seeking the most effective and efficient process for redressing complaints about prison conditions. See Strong v. David, 297 F.3d 646, 649 (7th Cir. 2002) (noting that "it is up to the [prison] administrators to determine what is necessary to handle grievances effectively[,]" and that the "only constraint is that no prison system may establish a requirement inconsistent with the federal policy underlying § 1983 and § 1997e(a)"). Furthermore, if a prisoner pursues an administrative remedy that is inappropriate given his grievance, prison officials still retain the authority and discretion to dismiss or redirect the complaint.
In this case two sets of administrative procedures established by the CCDOC, G.O. 4.1 and G.O. 14.5, seem to provide a remedy for Ali's injury. Through his father's filing of a complaint with the prison's supervising and commanding officers and Ali's full participation in the IAD's investigation and resolution of his complaint, Ali exhausted such remedies as were available to him through G.O. 4.1. The court believes this conduct satisfies the PLRA's exhaustion requirement. That Ali might have chosen instead to file a grievance and take advantage of the remedies available to him through G.O. 14.5 does not affect this conclusion; for as strictly as the exhaustion requirement must be construed, this court does not read it to mean that a prisoner who fully exhausts one legitimate, available administrative remedy must also be required to exhaust an indefinite number of alternative administrative remedies before bringing his claim to federal court. Cf. Camp, 219 F.3d at 281 (not requiring prisoner who invoked alternative grievance procedure to "jump through any further administrative hoops" to get to federal court after his grievance was "fully examined on the merits by the ultimate administrative authority").
III. Conclusion
Plaintiff Ali's motion to reconsider the dismissal of his complaint for failure to exhaust administrative remedies is granted. The court orders the case reinstated.