Stilley v. Garland

Case: 21-60022 Document: 00516324695 Page: 1 Date Filed: 05/18/2022
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
May 18, 2022
No. 21-60022
Summary Calendar Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
Oscar Stilley,
Plaintiff—Appellant,
versus
Merrick Garland, U.S. Attorney General; David Paul, Warden at
Federal Correctional Institute Yazoo City; Christopher Rivers, In his
official capacity as Warden, Yazoo City Low; Kathleen Hawk Sawyer,
In her official capacity as Director of the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau
of Prisons; J. F. Caraway, In his official capacity as Regional Director of the
South Central Region of the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons;
J. A. Keller, In his official capacity as Regional Director of the Southeast
Region of the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons; The
Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons;
United States of America; John Does 1-49,
Defendants—Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Mississippi
USDC No. 3:19-CV-06
Case: 21-60022 Document: 00516324695 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/18/2022
No. 21-60022
Before King, Costa, and Ho, Circuit Judges.
Per Curiam:*
Oscar Stilley was a federal inmate at all times relevant to this appeal
and sued defendants, including the Bureau of Prisons and various federal
officials, for the wrongs he allegedly experienced while incarcerated. The
district court dismissed his complaint for failure to exhaust administrative
remedies and denied a motion requesting that a free copy of his complaint be
mailed to him. We AFFIRM.
I. Background
Oscar Stilley was a federal inmate from April 2010 until September
2020. In January 2019, while incarcerated at FCC Yazoo in Yazoo City,
Mississippi (FCC Yazoo), he filed a complaint alleging violations of habeas
corpus, the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), the Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA), the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and the
Administrative Procedure Act (APA). His sixty-nine-page complaint details
alleged wrongs perpetrated against Stilley throughout the last decade in the
federal prison system spanning at least four prisons, including FCC Yazoo.
After he filed his complaint, he requested that the district court mail him a
copy. The court denied that request because he had not followed the
procedures for requesting a copy.
The United States filed a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), and the remaining defendants filed a motion to
dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). After briefing by the
parties, the magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation dismissing
the complaint in its entirety, and the district court adopted the report and
*
Pursuant to 5th Circuit Rule 47.5, the court has determined that this
opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited
circumstances set forth in 5th Circuit Rule 47.5.4.
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recommendation as the order of the court after considering further briefing
on Stilley’s objections to the report and recommendation.
Stilley appeals, arguing that the district court erred in (1) dismissing
Stilley’s complaint for failure to exhaust his administrative remedies,
(2) failing to allow the parties to conduct discovery before the dismissal, and
(3) failing to mail Stilley the requested copy of his complaint.
II. FTCA Claims
The FTCA provides a limited waiver of sovereign immunity for
plaintiffs to pursue tort claims against the government. United States v.
Orleans, 425 U.S. 807, 813 (1976). Before bringing such a suit, a plaintiff must
exhaust his administrative remedies. 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a). When a plaintiff
fails to exhaust his administrative remedies, the district court does not have
subject-matter jurisdiction over the FTCA claims. McNeil v. United States,
508 U.S. 106, 113 (1993). We review a district court’s Rule 12(b)(1) dismissal
of an FTCA claim de novo. In re Supreme Beef Processors, Inc., 468 F.3d 248,
251 (5th Cir. 2006) (en banc).
The administrative-remedy-exhaustion “requirement is a
prerequisite to suit under the FTCA.” Life Partners Inc. v. United States, 650
F.3d 1026, 1030 (5th Cir. 2011). Stilley has the burden of proving that he
exhausted his claims administratively. Griener v. United States, 900 F.3d 700,
703 (5th Cir. 2018). The district court explained that Stilley had not met this
burden of proof because he simply offered “conclusory allegations” without
proving exhaustion of his tort claims at any of the institutions. We agree.
Stilley incorrectly believes that the government must provide evidence that
he has not exhausted his administrative remedies. He also offers no
“specific . . . acts by any particular officer” that he then exhausted through
proper channels. Accordingly, the district court did not have subject-matter
jurisdiction over Stilley’s FTCA claims.
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III. Prison Condition Claims
Next, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) requires prisoners to
exhaust available administrative remedies before bringing an action “with
respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other
Federal law.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). We review a district court’s dismissal of
claims for failure to exhaust administrative remedies for an abuse of
discretion. Fuller v. Rich, 11 F.3d 61, 62 (5th Cir. 1994) (per curiam).
Stilley’s non-FTCA claims are similarly unsuccessful.1 The PLRA’s
exhaustion requirement applies to all of Stilley’s remaining claims because
they pertain to prison conditions. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (“No action shall
be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title,
or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other
correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are
exhausted.”). Unlike the FTCA claims, however, “failure to exhaust is an
1
Stilley argues on appeal that his FOIA claims, in particular, were exhausted
because a FOIA official notified him of his right to sue under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B).
However, he did not raise this argument to the district court in his objections to the report
and recommendation. “[A]rguments not raised before the district court are waived and will
not be considered on appeal unless the party can demonstrate ‘extraordinary
circumstances.’” State Indus. Prods. Corp. v. Beta Tech., Inc., 575 F.3d 450, 456 (5th Cir.
2009) (quoting N. Alamo Water Supply Corp. v. City of San Juan, 90 F.3d 910, 916 (5th Cir.
1996)). “Extraordinary circumstances exist when the issue involved is a pure question of
law and a miscarriage of justice would result from our failure to consider it.” Id. (quoting
N. Alamo Water Supply Corp., 90 F.3d at 910). But Stilley did not argue on appeal that
extraordinary circumstances warrant considering the argument unabandoned., and “[a]n
appellant abandons all issues not raised and argued in its initial brief on appeal.” Cinel v.
Connick, 15 F.3d 1338, 1345 (5th Cir. 1994).
At best, Stilley identifies facts including his status on home confinement as a
circumstance that hindered his writing of the objections. Nevertheless, the district court
granted Stilley’s motion for extension of time, allowing seven extra days to file his
objections. Accordingly, Stilley has neither raised the argument before the district court
nor adequately raised the issue on appeal. This argument against the district court’s
dismissal (without prejudice) of Stilley’s FOIA claims is thus waived.
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affirmative defense under the PLRA.” Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 216
(2007).
To meet that burden, the government offered a declaration from Lisa
Singleton, a Deputy Case Management Coordinator at FCC Yazoo.
Singleton outlined the “three-tiered [formal] review process” of prisoner
complaints followed by the Bureau. Singleton also described the SENTRY
electronic database that “stores information entered . . . on the status,
progress, and disposition of each remedy filed by an inmate.” Importantly,
“[e]ach filing received is logged into SENTRY regardless of whether the
remedy is ultimately exhausted and whether the filing is rejected for some
procedural reason.” Singleton reviewed all 23 remedy requests filed by
Stilley at FCC Yazoo, and all requests revealed that “Stilley failed to comply
with and complete the Bureau’s administrative remedy program for any one
remedy [request].”
On appeal, Stilley challenges Singleton’s declaration as not addressing
the claims involving prisons other than FCC Yazoo. The district court,
however, did not rely solely on Singleton’s declaration. It also relied on the
government’s evidence that all the administrative filings attached to Stilley’s
complaint were not exhausted. Reasons for failure to exhaust included
timeliness, submitting formal complaints without first attempting informal
resolution, and filing claims at the wrong institutional level.
Stilley’s only response—to the district court and again on appeal—is
that the administrative procedures are too difficult to complete, making them
“unavailable” under Supreme Court precedent in Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632(2016). In Ross, the Supreme Court held that there were three circumstances
in which remedies are unavailable: (1) when the administrative remedy
“operates as a simple dead end—with officers unable or consistently
unwilling to provide any relief to aggrieved inmates”; (2) where “some
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mechanism exists to provide relief, but no ordinary prisoner can discern or
navigate it”; and (3) “when prison administrators thwart inmates from
taking advantage of a grievance process through machination,
misrepresentation, or intimidation.” Id. at 643–44.
The district court concluded that the administrative remedies were
not “unavailable” to Stilley because (1) he did not set forth specific facts
explaining why he could not file each grievance properly and (2) his charges
are all “generalized to the entire inmate population” rather than targeted to
“his specific claims or attempts to exhaust.” On appeal, Stilley suggests that
it is the government’s burden to prove that the administrative remedies were
available to him. But that conflates the government’s affirmative defense
(that Stilley did not exhaust the administrative remedies of his claims) with
the availability of those remedies, and Stilley cites no law for the proposition
that the government must prove the latter. Accordingly, we affirm the district
court’s dismissal of Stilley’s non-FTCA claims.
IV. Conversion to Summary Judgment Motion
Stilley also appeals the district court’s conversion of defendants’
motion to dismiss to one for summary judgment. Stilley requested discovery
in his objections to the report and recommendation. We review a denial of a
Rule 56(d) motion for discovery for abuse of discretion. Am. Fam. Life
Assurance Co. of Columbus v. Biles, 714 F.3d 887, 894 (5th Cir. 2013) (per
curiam).
In order to be successful in a request for discovery, a plaintiff “need[s]
to give the district court some idea of how the sought-after discovery might
reasonably . . . create a factual dispute. The mere fleeting mention of a
matter . . . will not suffice to alert the district court to the potential
importance of [discovery].” Enplanar, Inc. v. Marsh, 11 F.3d 1284, 1292 (5th
Cir. 1994). Here, Stilley requested discovery claiming that to deny it would
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“not be fair” because the defendants interpret Stilley’s claims as
“unfounded conspiracy theories” but are unable “to rebut the actual facts
stated.” This request did not give the district court an idea of the sought-
after discovery material and “its likely relevance” to his claims. Id.Accordingly, the district court did not abuse its discretion by converting the
motion to dismiss into a summary judgment motion.
V. Denial of Request to Mail Complaint
Finally, the district court denied Stilley’s motions that requested in
forma pauperis status, a copy of his complaint served by the U.S. Marshal
without cost, and copies of all pleadings filed in the matter. The district court
found that Stilley “ha[d] submitted no updated evidence to indicate that he
is unable to bear the cost of service of process” and “ha[d] further failed to
show that he [wa]s economically unable to bear the costs concerning the
[pleadings’] exhibit copies.”
Stilley only appeals the district court’s denial of being mailed a file-
marked complaint. He argues that receiving a file-marked copy of a complaint
is a due process right and that inmates doing legal work are “cash cows.” He
then requests that we “include a paragraph in [our] decision, saying that from
henceforth any incarcerated pro se litigant in the 5th Circuit is entitled to
copies of all filed pleadings, with the filemark headers, by [U.S.] mail or from
some official source readily accessible to the inmate.”
Stilley received a copy of the complaint “from a friend.” Additionally,
on appeal, Stilley offers no “updated evidence to indicate that he is unable to
bear the cost of service of process,” he simply asserts that he “could not even
spend $35 in PACER fees to get a copy of the complaint with filemark
headers.” Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s denial of Stilley’s
motion and further decline to include his proffered paragraph or adopt his
proposed rule for the future handling of pro se pleadings.
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VI. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s order
dismissing Stilley’s claims and the order denying Stilley’s request for a free
copy of his complaint.
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