Perttu v. Richards

Cato Daily Podcast

Caleb Brown

Politics, News Commentary, 424708, Libertarian, Markets, Cato, News, Immigration, Peace, Policy, Government, Defense

4.6 • 949 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

When a prisoner accuses a prison official of sexual abuse, what do courts owe him? In Perttu v. Richards, the Supreme Court will weigh in. Cato's Mike Fox comments.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Cato Daily podcast for Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
0:08.6	I'm Caleb Brown.
0:09.5	What do we owe to people imprisoned?
0:12.2	Certainly, we owe them legal recourse when they're sexually abused by their own jailers.
0:17.9	The Supreme Court is currently grappling with the case of Pertuvie Richards, a case that
0:22.1	implicates the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Cato's Mike Fox comments.
0:29.2	Who is Kyle Richards? So, Kyle Richards is a Michigan prisoner who alleged that he was sexually abused. There were several other prisoners
0:39.7	who also alleged sexual abuse, and he repeatedly was filing grievances with the Michigan
0:46.5	Department of Corrections through his residential unit manager, Thomas Pertoux. And Pertu, of course,
0:52.6	was the one who he alleged was sexually assaulting him, so obviously he didn't want to get in trouble. He didn't want people to know. So he kept throwing out the grievances. Kyle Richards kept filing them. Eventually got to the point where what do you call it, where Pertue told Richards that if he keeps filing them, he's going to kill him.
1:10.9	So before we get to the meat of the case here, this was a 1983 complaint?
1:17.6	Yeah, so he filed a civil rights case in federal court, alleging that his rights were violated,
1:24.2	you know, and he was also retaliated against for attempting to report it.
1:29.0	There's this law called the PLRA, which is the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and the Prison
1:33.8	Litigation Reform Act requires that prisoners exhaust prison administrative remedies before they could
1:39.5	get into federal court. And that, of course, is the problem here because the person who he's required
1:45.1	to file the grievances with is the very same person who he alleges is sexually assaulting him.
1:50.3	So therefore, it is impossible for him to exhaust the administrative remedies because the guy
1:55.9	he has to use to exhaust them is throwing them away and threatening to kill him if he keeps
2:00.2	filing them.
2:02.0	One could argue that he did exhaust administrative remedies. Yeah, that would be my,
2:09.2	what I think here. But, you know, the issue in the case is where there is, you know, a dispute
	...

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