Boyd v. Thomas ( 2023 )

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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