A divided Supreme Court ruled on June 18 that a prisoner retains a right to a jury trial when there is a factual dispute over whether he fully exhausted prison grievance procedures before filing a lawsuit.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in Perttu v. Richards. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the opinion authored by Roberts.
The respondent, Kyle Brandon Richards, is a prisoner in Michigan who alleges he was sexually abused by the petitioner, Thomas Perttu, an employee of the state prison.
Richards claims that when he attempted to file grievance forms regarding the alleged abuse, Perttu “destroyed them and threatened to kill him if he filed more,” the opinion stated….