# Jenkins

> District Court, S.D. Illinois · March 16, 2026

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11288903

## Case

- **Full name:** Kejuan Jenkins v. Steven Reid, Tyler Pedroley, Dalton Roberts
- **Court:** District Court, S.D. Illinois
- **Decided:** March 16, 2026
- **Opinion:** 100trialcourt
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11288903

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- finding that an inmate who placed a timely ARB appeal in his chuckhole for mailing, but whose grievance was apparently lost, did all that he could to follow exhaustion procedures
- finding that an inmate did all he could to exhaust a grievance when he placed the appeal in his cell bars for mailing, but it got lost and he had no direction on what to do about a lost grievance

## Opinion text

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

KEJUAN JENKINS, )
)
Plaintiff, )
)
vs. ) Case No. 24-cv-1488-DWD
)
STEVEN REID, )
TYLER PEDROLEY, )
DALTON ROBERTS, )
)
Defendants. )

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

DUGAN, District Judge:
Plaintiff Kejuan Jenkins brings this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for alleged
deprivations of his constitutional rights while at Menard Correctional Center (Menard).
Plaintiff alleged that the defendants violated the Eighth Amendment in relation to some
events that transpired in the showers at Menard in April of 2024. Defendants moved for
summary judgment (Doc. 80), Plaintiff responded (Doc. 84), and after finding there was
a genuine dispute (Doc. 88) the Court scheduled an evidentiary hearing. At the hearing,
the Court heard testimony from Plaintiff, a Menard counselor, a Menard grievance
officer, a Menard PREA compliance officer, and an Administrative Review Board officer.
In light of the testimony and evidence presented in this matter, the Court finds that
Defendants have failed to carry their burden of demonstrating Plaintiff did not exhaust
his administrative remedies.
BACKGROUND

Plaintiff signed his complaint on June 12, 2024, and it was received by the Court
the same day. (Doc. 1 at 7) In the Complaint, Plaintiff alleged that in April of 2024 he
was forced to shower in a communal area with homosexual inmates who participated in
open sexual acts and attempted to persuade him to do the same. He was uncomfortable
with the situation and asked Defendants to address it, but they refused and pressured
him to participate. Ultimately, Plaintiff ended up in a physical altercation, which he
alleges was necessary to stave off advances, and which he alleges staff did not attempt to

mitigate. Upon initial review of the pleading, Plaintiff was allowed to proceed on the
following claims:
Claim 1: Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment claim
against Defendant Reid related to the April 7, 2024, shower
incident;

Claim 2: Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment claim
against Defendants Pedroley and Roberts related to the April
8, 2024, shower incident;

Claim 3: Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment claim
against Defendant Reid for the final April 2024 shower
incident that resulted in a physical altercation;

Claim 4: Failure to intervene claim against Defendant Reid for the
April 2024 shower altercation; and

Claim 5: State law negligence claim against Defendant Reid for the last
April 2024 shower incident that resulted in the altercation.

(Doc. 21).
In the Motion for Summary Judgment, Defendants argue that Plaintiff did not
submit any relevant grievances, nor did he send any PREA reports or kites to the warden.
They support their position with grievance logs, a declaration from Menard’s PREA
coordinator, the Warden’s kite log, and declarations from a grievance officer and

counselor.
In response, Plaintiff argues that he attempted to submit multiple documents
about the incident in April of 2024, but he had to place them in his cell bars for mailing,
and he had no way of knowing if they were properly transmitted by prison staff. He
points to a grievance he submitted in 2023 about a medical issue that was not answered
until more than a year later as proof of the slow nature of Menard’s grievance process.

Plaintiff included alleged copies of the various April grievances, as well as declarations
from many fellow inmates about their ability to access sick call or to get responses to
grievances.
The Court found that the dispute could not be resolved on paper because there
was a material dispute about if Plaintiff did in fact attempt to submit grievances in April

of 2024 that were lost or obstructed, or if he failed to submit anything before filing this
lawsuit. An evidentiary hearing was conducted on March 13, 2026.
FINDINGS OF FACT

Plaintiff testified that he never received a Menard orientation manual and did not
have any form of written instructions on the prison’s grievance process. He explained
that he submitted multiple grievances beginning on April 7, 2024, about the incidents
alleged in this lawsuit. All grievances he submitted were marked as emergencies. Under
the emergency process, the warden must first determine if the grievance will be
processed as an emergency or not. If emergency status is granted, the grievance
automatically goes to the next level of review, but if it is denied, the inmate must submit
the grievance again via the normal process. Plaintiff’s only option to submit grievances

in his housing situation was to place them in his cell bars for staff to collect and distribute.
Plaintiff testified that inmates were not allowed to get copies of their grievances
until they came back from the first level of review. For this reason, it was his own practice
to request multiple grievance forms and to pen his own duplicate copies at the time he
prepared grievances for submission. He testified that usually an emergency grievance
would get a response within a week or so about if the warden deemed it an emergency

or not, but he never got a response to the April grievances he filed as emergencies. He
testified that in November of 2024, he resubmitted a copy of his earlier April 7, 2024,
grievance to try and get acknowledgment of his overall grievance efforts.
Plaintiff testified that Counselor Smith makes rounds in the cellhouse once a
month, but during rounds she does not make a point to stop at everyone’s cell. He

indicated that if you are not awake early in the morning when she comes around, you
may miss her because she is there and gone quickly. Plaintiff believes that staff at Menard
are a close-knit community and that if an inmate submits a grievance they do not like,
they will simply discard it. He stated that he spoke to Smith only about his protective
custody status, but then admitted he also spoke to her about job placement.

Caly Smith, Plaintiff’s correctional counselor during the relevant timeframe at
Menard testified about her cellhouse rounds. She testified that she visits the cellhouse
every 30 days, and during a visit she will speak to offenders about a wide variety of
things. Smith will make notes in the CHAMPS counseling log about inmate encounters
when she returns to her office. She reviewed the CHAMPS notes for the hearing and
testified that based on the notes she saw Plaintiff on April 2 and 12, May 2, June 5 and 11,

and July 3, 2024. During these encounters she does not recall Plaintiff asking about
grievances or reporting any PREA issues. However, she knows she assisted with
Plaintiff’s requests for a job and housing reclassification, which were both denied.
Lance Phelps, a grievance officer at Menard, testified that grievances are either
collected by staffing walking around and gathering them by hand, or by staff bringing
around a portable grievance box. Once a grievance is received by the grievance office, it

is logged in an internal log, and a CHAMPS receipt is created for the inmate. If the
grievance is marked an emergency, it is transmitted to the warden for an initial
determination of emergency status. If it is not an emergency, the person who logs the
grievance will transmit it to the appropriate initial level of review. If a grievance is
eligible for initial review by the counselor, it will get a response, and the inmate then has

14 days to appeal to the grievance officer. Once a grievance officer reviews a grievance,
it is forwarded to the Chief Administrative Officer for a final signature on the proposed
disposition. An inmate has 30 days to appeal a grievance to the final level of review.
Phelps testified that every inmate gets an orientation manual on arrival that describes the
grievance process, though he did not know if Plaintiff received a manual. Phelps agreed

that a cellhouse lockdown can last anywhere from a day to a month, and that during that
time inmates cannot leave their cells to access physical grievance boxes.
Sheri Buettner, a PREA compliance officer, testified that an individual can lodge a
PREA report via many channels, including a verbal report to staff, or via a grievance or
kite. If a PREA report is received, internal affairs is contacted to make an initial
assessment of the situation. If internal affairs deems the report credible, then an

investigation and multiple follow-up contacts with the inmate will ensue, but if they do
not deem a report credible nothing further happens. Buettner testified that Plaintiff was
interviewed by internal affairs in December of 2024, but they determined his report did
not meet criteria and nothing further happened. She was not the PREA coordinator from
April to June of 2024, and she does not know if he made reports during that time, or how
they were handled.

Administrative Review Board (ARB) member Ryan Nothnagle testified that the
ARB did not receive any grievance appeals from Plaintiff between April and June of 2024.
He indicated that if inmates send correspondence other than an appeal, it is logged, but
he did not explain where this log is kept or if any responses are sent to this
correspondence.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
A. Legal Standards

Summary judgment is proper if there is no genuine issue as to any material fact
and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a). A genuine
issue of material fact exists when “the evidence is such that a reasonable [factfinder] could
[find] for the nonmoving part.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986).
The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) provides that a prisoner may not bring a
lawsuit about prison conditions unless and until he has exhausted all available
administrative remedies. 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a); Pavey v. Conley, 544 F.3d 739, 740 (7th Cir.
2008). “The exhaustion requirement is an affirmative defense, which the defendants bear
the burden of proving.” Pavey v. Conley, 663 F.3d 899, 903 (7th Cir. 2011).

Historically speaking, courts in the Seventh Circuit have resolved the issue of
exhaustion of administrative remedies on paper, or after an evidentiary hearing if there
is a genuine dispute of fact. See e.g., Smallwood v. Williams, 59 F.4th 306, 315 (7th Cir. 2023)
(“In this circuit, we have determined that disputed factual questions that bear on
exhaustion can be resolved by a district court judge (rather than a jury) as a preliminary
matter, in what is known as a Pavey hearing.”). In Perttu v. Richards, 145 S.Ct. 1793, 1800

(June 18, 2025), the Supreme Court held that an inmate is entitled “to a jury trial on PLRA
exhaustion when that issue is intertwined with the merits of a claim that falls under the
Seventh Amendment.”1
An ”available” remedy is one that is “capable of use for the accomplishment of a
purpose” and “is accessible or may be obtained.” Crouch v. Brown, 27 F.4th 1315, 1320

(7th Cir. 2022) citing Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632, 642 (2016). If availability is at issue, the
Court must resolve that issue before proceeding to the merits of the exhaustion dispute.
Wallace v. Baldwin, 55 F.4th 535, 539 (7th Cir. 2022) (the district court must first consider
the threshold question of if exhaustion was available). There are three circumstances that
might support a finding of unavailability: (1) a process may be unavailable if it is so

opaque that it becomes incapable of use; (2) a process may be unavailable if
administrators thwart an inmate from using it via machination, misrepresentation, or

1 In this case, Perttu does not apply because there is no intertwinement between the exhaustion issues and
the merits of the underlying claim. Plaintiff does not allege the defendants personally interfered with his
access to the grievance process, and he does not suggest retaliation.
intimidation; or, (3) a process may be unavailable if it operates as a “dead end” with
officers unable or consistently unwilling to provide any relief for aggrieved inmates. Ross

v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632, 643-44 (2016). In Dole and Gooch, the Seventh Circuit considered
situations where a process was unavailable due to acts or misrepresentations by prison
administrators. See Dole v. Chandler, 438 F.3d 804, 809 (7th Cir. 2006) (finding that an
inmate did all he could to exhaust a grievance when he placed the appeal in his cell bars
for mailing, but it got lost and he had no direction on what to do about a lost grievance);
Gooch v. Young, 24 F.4th 624 (7th Cir. 2022) (finding the grievance process was unavailable

where prison staff threatened Plaintiff and refused to give him the appropriate grievance
form). “If prison employees do not respond to a properly filed grievance or otherwise
use affirmative misconduct to prevent a prisoner from exhausting,” then the grievance
procedure becomes unavailable. Dole v. Chandler, 438 F.3d 804, 809 (7th Cir. 2006) (finding
that an inmate who placed a timely ARB appeal in his chuckhole for mailing, but whose

grievance was apparently lost, did all that he could to follow exhaustion procedures).
As an inmate in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), Plaintiff must
follow the grievance process outlined in the Illinois Administrative Code. 20 ILL. ADMIN.
CODE § 504.800, et seq. (2017). Under IDOC’s procedure, an inmate initiates a grievance
with his counselor within 60 days of an event, and he may then submit his grievance to a

grievance officer at his facility, and to the CAO at his facility. If an inmate is unsatisfied
with the outcome at the facility he must appeal to the ARB within 30 days. 20 ILL. ADMIN.
CODE § 504.850(a).
B. Analysis

The burden is on the Defendants to establish that the grievance process is
available. After hearing testimony and reviewing the documentary evidence, the Court
finds that the Defendants have not credibly established availability of the grievance
process in this case. Although Officer Phelps testified that all inmates are provided with
an orientation manual that explains the grievance process, Plaintiff testified that he was
told generally about the existence of a manual at orientation, but that he was never
provided with a copy. Plaintiff and Phelps both testified that in Plaintiff’s living

situation, it was conceivable that his only way to deposit a grievance may have been to
place it in his cell bars or to hand it directly to an officer who was circulating the gallery
for placement in the grievance box. Plaintiff testified that he submitted three or four
emergency grievances in April of 2024, which aligns precisely with the exhibits to his
summary judgment response.

He testified that when an emergency grievance goes to the Warden, a receipt
should be generated, and generally within a week an inmate learns if the Warden deemed
the grievance an emergency or a non-emergency. Plaintiff understood that if the
grievance was deemed non-emergency, it would be his responsibility to submit it again
for normal processing. However, with his April 2024 grievances he claims he never got

acknowledgement that they were received or reviewed by the Warden. Plaintiff testified
that inmates are not allowed to make copies of their grievances until they get the first
round of responses, so his only way to keep records was to request multiple grievance
forms and to make his own handwritten copies. No one testified about the specific
process an inmate is supposed to use if he believes a grievance comes up missing. There
was also no written documentation tendered about this issue.

Counselor Smith testified that she visited Plaintiff’s cellhouse multiple times
between April and June of 2024. The CHAMPS counseling summary submitted with the
written motion for summary judgment (Doc. 80-4 at 1-2) depicted these encounters. The
counseling summary said Plaintiff reported no issues, and Smith testified that she did not
recall talking to Plaintiff about any PREA issues or grievances. Smith indicated in
testimony that it is her practice to note inmate concerns in the CHAMPS notes, but that

she makes her notes when she returns to her office. On his own account, Plaintiff testified
that sometimes the 30-day rounds that Smith makes are brief, and she does not always
speak to all inmates. There was no information given about how many inmates are in
each cellhouse, or how Smith keeps track of inmate conversations between the time they
occur and when she returns to enter her notes.

Factually, even after the evidentiary hearing, this case remains a close call.
However, the burden is on the defendants to establish the availability of remedies, and
in this case, the Court finds that they have not met that burden. It remains an open
question if Plaintiff was ever instructed on what he might do if a grievance was lost or
did not get a response. An inmate must be informed of the grievance process in order for

it to be found available. See e.g., Ramirez v. Young, 906 F.3d 530, 538 (7th Cir. 2018)
(“Prisons must affirmatively provide the information needed to file a grievance.”). It is
also questionable whether the CHAMPS notes from gallery tours are the best account of
what transpired if the counselors do not take contemporaneous notes while visiting with
the inmates. Additionally, it is concerning in this case that testimony suggested staff may
sometimes hand collect grievances rather than circulating a locked grievance box when

inmates are not allowed to leave their cells. Given Plaintiff’s undisputed testimony that
sometimes cellhouses are on complete lockdown for 30 days, it is feasible that he could
have tried to hand submit grievances only for them to be lost or intentionally destroyed.
The Court is not suggesting that it found any of the witnesses to be explicitly
untruthful in this case, but the bigger problem is the overall poor grievance system at
Menard. The lack of an accurate and thorough receipt and grievance documentation

system continues to be an issue in cases filed by Menard inmates. If inmates are not
allowed to make copies of grievances until the prison processes them through an entire
level of review, and if they do not get instantaneous receipts when they deposit a
grievance for filing, it is often difficult to resolve a dispute like the one before the Court
in this case. The undersigned is required to conduct many Pavey hearings solely because

Menard continues to maintain a poor record-keeping system for grievance
documentation, and because it seemingly does not clearly communicate the procedures
and expectations to inmates. Until this systemic problem is resolved, Pavey hearings of
this nature will continue to consume court resources. Given that the defendants did not
meet their burden of showing that Plaintiff was informed of the system, that he had an

ability to check on the status of grievances, or that he did not submit any in April of 2024,
their motion on the affirmative defense of failure to exhaust is denied.
DISPOSITION
The Defendants failed to meet their burden of proof to demonstrate that the
grievance process was available for Plaintiff's grievances in April of 2024. A merits

summary judgment schedule shall follow.
IT IS SO ORDERED. ZL
Dated: March 16, 2026 bun i

DAVID W. DUGAN
United States District Judge

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11288903. Public record. Not legal advice.