Hope v. Pelzer

Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730 (2002), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the defense of qualified immunity, under which government actors may not be sued for actions they take in connection with their offices, did not apply to a lawsuit challenging the Alabama Department of Corrections's use of the "hitching post", a punishment whereby inmates were immobilized for long periods of time.

At issue in Hope v. Pelzer was the question of whether qualified immunity applied in the case of punishment exceeding the standards of cruel and unusual punishment. The first question was whether the use of the hitching post was cruel and unusual in the twentieth century. The second question, depending on a yes answer to the first, was whether the guards were acting as agents of the state, and therefore not personally liable. Most importantly, the Supreme Court clarified to meet the “clearly established” standard is not limited solely on whether an earlier precedent with the same conduct exists but if a reasonable person would have recognized beforehand that the conduct would be unlawful or unconstitutional can itself be considered clearly established, even without a case law. The Court denied the correctional officers qualified immunity because tying inmates to a hitch post as a form of punishment clearly violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

The Court opined that a hitching post was generally cruel and unusual, applying 20th century standards that probably would not have applied in 1789. The second question, and the one that the Court ruled upon, was whether the guards could claim qualified immunity. The Court let Hope sue the guards in District Court. In 2005, that court found that there was insufficient evidence to prove that in this particular case the named guards had meted cruel and unusual punishment.