Shelly v. Fischer, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 18421 (7th Cir. July 24, 2025) (unpublished):

ORDER

In this consolidated appeal, Marzono Shelly, an Indiana prisoner, challenges the district court's orders in two cases that sanctioned him for knowingly submitting forged documents as evidence. We affirm.

In 2022, Shelly filed separate lawsuits against prison officials at Wabash Valley [*2]  Correctional Facility in Carlisle, Indiana, for violating his constitutional rights. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In the first suit (No. 2:22-cv-00065-JMS-MG), Shelly asserted that Scott Fischer, a correctional officer, retaliated against him in violation of his rights under the First Amendment by searching Shelly after he filed a grievance against Fischer. Further proceedings ensued. Shelly responded to Fischer's motion for summary judgment by submitting two purported grievance responses that acknowledged Fischer's misconduct. Fischer, however, disclaimed the grievance responses as forged and sought sanctions against Shelly for falsifying evidence. In support, Fischer introduced affidavits from both the prison's "litigation liaison" and grievance specialists (whose signatures appeared on the responses) denying that the grievance responses were authentic. The grievance specialists added that they were not even employed in their positions when the responses purportedly were written.

Meanwhile, in a second suit (No. 2:22-cv-00068-JMS-MG), Shelly asserted that three prison officials violated his rights under the Eighth Amendment when they moved him for one year to a cell that they knew contained mold, causing him to experience headaches, [*3]  sinus infections, and shortness of breath. The defendants later sought summary judgment based on a failure of proof. Shelly responded with evidence that included a purported grievance response acknowledging the presence of black mold in his cell. The defendants (who were represented by the same counsel as Fischer) asserted that Shelly's grievance response also was forged, and they too moved for sanctions. As in Fischer's case, the defendants supported their motion with affidavits from the litigation liaison and grievance specialist denying that the grievance response was authentic.

Because the defendants in both suits moved at the same time for sanctions against Shelly based on similar alleged misconduct, the district court held a joint hearing on the motions. Based on testimony from the litigation liaison and the grievance specialists, the court found that the responses were forged and that Shelly had submitted them in bad faith. The court relied on its inherent authority to strike Shelly's summary-judgment responses, to grant the defendants' motions for summary judgment and for sanctions, to dismiss Shelly's suits with prejudice, and to restrict his ability to file papers in any civil [*4]  cases with the district court for two years and until he paid all outstanding filing fees and fines owed to any federal court.

Shelly appealed both judgments. We consolidated the appeals for purposes of briefing and disposition.

Shelly first challenges the district court's dismissal of his suits as a sanction for misconduct. He argues that the court applied an incorrect preponderance-of-the-evidence burden of proof when finding that the grievance responses were forged and that his conduct showed bad faith. In his view, the court should have applied the more demanding clear-and-convincing-evidence standard. But he is incorrect: Facts supporting sanctions need be proved only by a preponderance of the evidence. Ramirez v. T&H Lemont, Inc., 845 F.3d 772, 778-79 (7th Cir. 2016).

Shelly also argues that no evidence supported the district court's finding that the grievance responses were forged. But we review such findings for clear error, Martin v. Redden, 34 F.4th 564, 568 (7th Cir. 2022), and the defendants introduced ample evidence of forgery. The grievance specialists testified that they did not write or sign the documents and that they did not even hold their jobs on the dates in question. And the prison's litigation liaison corroborated the grievance specialists' testimony about their employment dates. [*5]  Further, the specialists each testified that the grievance responses contained language that grievance specialists would not use, such as acknowledging the presence of mold in a prisoner's cell or disclosing an investigation into another prison official's misconduct.

Shelly next argues that, even if the grievance responses were forged, the district court lacked an evidentiary basis to find that he forged the documents, that he knew the documents were forged, or that he filed them in bad faith. But given the deferential clear-error standard, the district court's finding of bad faith was a plausible interpretation of the evidence. As the court explained, (1) Shelly's inability to counter the testimony of the prison officials "leaves no doubt" that the grievance responses were forged; (2) only Shelly had an incentive to forge the responses; (3) the most likely source of the forged documents was Shelly, given the absence of evidence that anyone else had an incentive to forge the documents; and (4) Shelly provided no sworn testimony or documentary evidence to support an alternative explanation for the forged documents. None of those findings was clearly erroneous, and each supports the court's [*6]  conclusion that Shelly acted in bad faith.

To the extent Shelly argues that dismissal was an overly harsh sanction, the district court's decision was an appropriate exercise of its discretion. Dismissal can be appropriate "when the plaintiff has abused the judicial process by seeking relief based on information that [he] knows is false." Fulks v. Watson, 88 F.4th 1202, 1208 (7th Cir. 2023) (citation omitted). And the court here considered but properly rejected lesser sanctions, see id., reasonably concluding that Shelly's behavior warranted the "strongest of sanctions" based on the gravity of his misconduct, his repeated filing of forged documents, and his failure to take responsibility for his conduct.

AFFIRMED