Criminal Law and Procedure Decisions: Booth v. Churner</titl <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Feed for FindLaw Legal News Top Headlines" href="http://feeds.findlaw.com/FindlawNews-TopStories" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Feed for FindLaw Writ Legal Commentary" href="http://feeds.findlaw.com/FindLawWrit" /> <body>  <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.findlaw.com/resources/www.findlaw.com/js/omtr_code.js?ver=2"></script> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> omtr.hier1="Cobrands:Sol Wisenberg"  /************* DO NOT ALTER ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE ! **************/ var omtr_code=omtr.t();if(omtr_code)document.write(omtr_code)//--></script>   <script language="javascript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/tracking/wss-lp.js"></script> <script language="javascript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/tracking/hbx-0250.js"></script> <noscript> <img src="http://ehg-findlaw.hitbox.com/HG?hc=we76&cd=1&hv=6&ce=u&hb=DM531216MLSZ&n=LP&vcon=NO+JAVASCRIPT&vpc=HBX0250u" border="0" width="1" height="1"> </noscript>  <div id="doc3" class="yui-t7"> <div id="hd" role="banner"> <div id="lphead"> <div id="lplogo"><a href="http://lp.findlaw.com" class="lphomelink" alt="FindLaw For Legal Professionals" title="FindLaw For Legal Professionals"></a></div> <div id="consumerlink"><a href="http://www.findlaw.com/">Not a Legal Professional? 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Churner</ul><p align="center"><b>Prison Conditions – Exhaustion of AdministrativeRemedies</b></p><p><b>Case: <a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/000/99-1964.html">Booth v. Churner</a></b></p><p><b>Issue</b>: [<a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/42/chapters/21/subchapters/i-a/sections/section_1997e.html">42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)</a>, the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995,requires a prisoner to exhaust “such administrative remedies as are available”before suing over prison conditions.] “The question is whether a prisoner seekingonly money damages must complete a prison administrative process that could provide somesort of relief on the complaint stated, but no money.”</p><p><b>Facts</b>: Petitioner Timothy Booth, an inmate at the State CorrectionalInstitution at Smithfield, Pennsylvania, filed an action under <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=42&sec=1983">42 U.S.C. § 1983</a> inthe United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, claiming thatcorrectional officers at Smithfield violated his Eighth Amendment right to be free fromcruel and unusual punishment. Specifically, Booth claimed that correctional officers hadassaulted him, bruised his wrists in tightening and twisting handcuffs placed upon him,thrown cleaning materials in his face, and denied him medical attention to treat ensuinginjuries. Booth initially sought various forms of injunctive relief, including transferto another prison, and several hundred thousand dollars in monetary damages. Booth laterwas transferred to another facility, however, and money was “the only relief stillrequested.”</p><p>The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), requires that aprisoner must exhaust “such administrative remedies as are available” beforefiling a suit over prison conditions. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections providedan administrative grievance system that addressed Booth’s complaints of abuse andexcessive force, but had no provision for recovery of money damages. Before filing suitin federal court, Booth brought an administrative grievance action. However, after hisinitial petition for relief was denied, he did not seek intermediate or finaladministrative review, even though those avenues of relief were administrativelyavailable.</p><p>Because Booth had failed to avail himself of these administrative appeals, the UnitedStates District Court dismissed his action without prejudice for failure to exhaust the“administrative remedies ... available.” The United States Court of Appeals for theThird Circuit affirmed, rejecting Booth’s argument that the Act’s requirementof exhausting administrative remedies did not apply to his action because thestate’s administrative process could not award him the monetary relief he sought.The Supreme Court granted certiorari to address a conflict among the federal circuits.</p><p><b>Holding</b>: Congress has mandated exhaustion of administrative remedies under 42U.S.C. § 1997e(a), irrespective of the particular forms of relief sought and offeredthrough administrative grievance mechanisms.</p><p><b>Reasoning</b>: Justice Souter wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court. To Souter,the dispute came down “to whether or not a remedial scheme is ‘available’where … the administrative process has authority to take some action in response toa complaint, but not the remedial action an inmate demands to the exclusion of all otherforms of redress.” Each party agreed that the plain meaning of “remedies” and“available” in the phrase “such administrative remedies as areavailable” was controlling, but disagreed as to the precise meaning of those terms.The Court found this exercise of definition in isolation inconclusive, but discovered“clear pointers towards the congressional objective” in two otherconsiderations.</p><p>First, the Court observed that within the modifying clause in which the essentialterms are contained (“until such administrative remedies as are available have beenexhausted”), the term “exhausted” has “a decidedly proceduralemphasis.” The clause “makes sense only in referring to the procedural means, notthe particular relief ordered.” For example, it would be “very strange to say that aprisoner must ‘exhaust’ an administrative order reassigning an abusive guardbefore a prisoner could go to court and ask for something else…. It makes no senseto demand that someone exhaust ‘such administrative redress’ as is available;one ‘exhausts’ processes, not forms of relief, and the statute provides thatone must.” Therefore, the language suggests that a procedure’s failure to provideall the remedies sought does not create an exception to the statute’s exhaustionrequirement.</p><p>Second, the Court reasoned that statutory history confirmed Congress’ intentionto require procedural exhaustion regardless of the fit between the prisoner’srequested remedies and the remedies available under the administrative process. Before§ 1997e(a) was amended in 1995, a court had discretion to require a state inmate toexhaust “such remedies as are available” if those remedies were “plain,speedy, and effective.” The 1995 amendment eliminated the lower court’s discretionto dispense with administrative exhaustion of remedies and eliminated the condition thatany such remedy be “plain, speedy, and effective” before exhaustion could berequired. The significance of Congress’s 1995 deletion of the requirement that aremedy be “effective” is clear in light of the Court’s earlier decision in<a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/503/140.html">McCarthy v. Madigan</a>, 503 U.S. 140 (1992). In <u>McCarthy</u>, the Court hadindicated that when a prisoner sought mere money damages, only an administrativeprocedure able to provide money damages would be “effective” within the meaningof 1997e(a). When Congress replaced the condition that a remedy be “effective”with the exhaustion requirement at issue in the present case, Congress “presumablyunderstood that under <u>McCarthy</u> the term ‘effective’ in the former §1997e(a) eliminated the possibility of requiring exhaustion of administrative remedieswhen an inmate sought only monetary relief and the administrative process offered none.”By removing the condition that the administrative remedy be “effective,” the“fair inference to be drawn is that Congress meant to preclude the <u>McCarthy</u>result” and impose “an obviously broader exhaustion requirement.”</p><p><b>Other Opinions</b>: None.</p><p><b>Comment:</b> The Court stressed in a footnote that “we will not read futilityor other exceptions into statutory exhaustion requirements where Congress has providedotherwise.”</p> </div> </div>      </div> <div class="yui-u" id="lpstructure-rightcol">  <div id="rightcolmodule" class="rightcol_latestblogs"> <h3>Latest Blog Posts</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://blogs.findlaw.com/greedy_associates/">LSAT, Anyone?</a></li> <li><a href="http://blogs.findlaw.com/in_house/">Survey Profiles the In House Attorney: Where Do You Stand?</a></li> <li><a href="http://blogs.findlaw.com/strategist/">Free Webcast: The Basics of Marketing Your Firm Online</a></li> <li><a href="http://blogs.findlaw.com/technologist/">Video Streaming Media - In Your Face(book)</a></li> <li><a href="http://blog.lawyermarketing.com/blog/lawyer-marketing/">Best global brands</a></li> <a href="http://www.findlaw.com/blog-index/" class="rightcol_viewmore">View More »</a> </ul> </div> <div id="rightcolmodule" class="rightcol_300x250"><script language="Javascript">dart_call("300x250", "loc=top", 1);</script></div> <div id="rightcolmodule" class="rightcol_normal"> <h3>FindLaw Career Center</h3> <ul><strong>Search for Law Jobs:</strong><br /> <form name="searchForm" action="http://www.indeed.com/p/index.php" method="get"> <input name="pid" value="791244634154558" type="hidden"> <select name="q" size="5" id="fljobsmodule"> <option value="attorney">Attorney</option> <option value="corporate counsel">Corporate Counsel</option> <option value="paralegal">Paralegal</option> <option value="judicial clerk">Judicial Clerk</option> <option value="investment banker">Investment Banker</option> </select> <br> <input class="input_submit" value="Search Jobs" type="submit"> <a href="http://www.indeed.com/p/postjob.php?pid=791244634154558">Post a Job</a> | <a href="http://careers.findlaw.com/">View More Jobs</a> </form> </ul> </div> <div id="rightcolmodule" class="rightcol_300x250"><script language="Javascript">dart_call("300x250", "loc=bottom", 1);</script></div> <div id="rightcolmodule" class="rightcol_sponsored">  <div style="display: block;" id="fl_container3"> <script language="javascript">dart_call("645x52", "loc=bottom", 1);</script> <script language="javascript">dart_call("645x52", "loc=bottom", 1);</script> <script language="javascript">dart_call("645x52", "loc=bottom", 1);</script> <div id="fl_label">Ads by FindLaw</div> <script> hide_box('fl_container3'); 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