A Missouri prison inmate will get a day in court, the state appeals court in Kansas City ruled Friday.
Christopher Gray sued the state Department of Corrections last July, arguing the department should be giving him credit for an additional six years of time served in county jails, before he was sent to the department, toward his prison sentences.
Gray is serving a 30-year prison sentence from Camden County, where he was tried in 2006 on a change of venue from Christian County, on a charge of sexual exploitation of a minor, according to online court records.
Gray was an inmate at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking when he filed his lawsuit and currently is at the Northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green.
The department asked Green to dismiss the lawsuit, saying Gray had not “exhausted all his administrative remedies before filing (the) lawsuit,” and arguing, because of that, the court didn’t have what’s called “subject-matter jurisdiction” even to hear Gray’s case.
Green agreed, dismissing Gray’s lawsuit last Nov. 26.
But, Judge Victor C. Howard wrote for the three-judge appeals court panel, the department’s and Green’s reliance on a 2000 appeals court decision was misplaced because the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in 2009 “statutory prerequisites” — such as completing administrative procedures before filing a lawsuit — “do not impact a circuit court’s subject matter jurisdiction.”
And the appeals court sent the case back to Green for further proceedings.
Howard wrote: “The Department’s claim that Gray failed to meet the requirements of (state law) section 506.384 (about administrative procedures) ‘should be raised as an affirmative defense to the circuit court’s statutory authority to proceed with resolving (Gray’s) claim.’
“If the Department raises as an affirmative defense in its responsive pleading the claim that Gray has failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by (state law), the circuit court will be required to ascertain if, in fact, Gray has exhausted such remedies so as to evaluate the circuit court’s authority to permit his suit to proceed.”