Hope V. Pelzer - Dissenting Opinion

Dissenting Opinion

Justice Thomas identified two principal defects in Hope's case that led him to conclude that the prison guards Hope sued were entitled to qualified immunity. First, the three guards Hope sued were not directly involved in the June incident, the one the Court found to be most disagreeable. Two of them were not even present at the time, and the third's sole contribution to the injury Hope alleged was the act of attaching Hope to the "restraining bar". As against the defendants Hope himself named in this suit, then, he did not allege that they were the cause of his injuries, and thus Hope's complaint was, in Thomas's view, deficient.

In light of these deficiencies, Thomas concluded that it was "far from obvious" that the actions of these three guards violated the Eighth Amendment. The question Thomas asked was whether in 1995 it was obvious that the "mere act of cuffing petitioner to the restraining bar... violated the Eighth Amendment." In Thomas's view, no prior litigation involving Alabama's use of the restraining bar would have put a reasonable prison guard on notice that the mere act of attaching a prisoner to it would violate the Eighth Amendment. The three federal district courts in Alabama had all rejected this contention, as well as the idea endorsed by the majority—that exposure to the elements resulting from an extended stay on the hitching post, coupled with the pain caused by the handcuffed—was the wanton and unnecessary infliction of pain. Hope did not allege that the mere act of attaching him to the restraining bar "imposed a substantial risk of serious harm upon him". Nor was it, in light of the district courts' conclusion, "obvious" that this act would have caused Hope harm. There was no evidence that these particular guards had read the Department of Justice's report. The Alabama Department of Corrections's regulation specifically authorized guards to use the restraining bar when inmates were disruptive to the work squad. The fact that the guards did not comply with the recordkeeping requirement of the regulation was beside the point, Justice Thomas believed, because Hope never alleged that the guards' failure to do so caused the Eighth Amendment violation. Thomas also read binding Fifth and Eleventh Circuit precedent merely to prohibit "malicious and sadistic" conduct by guards. While handcuffing prisoners to fences for "long periods of time" could be considered malicious and sadistic under these binding precedents, it was not clear to Justice Thomas whether 7 hours counted as a "long period of time" under this precedent. Finally, "deliberate indifference" means that the prison official knew of and then disregarded an excessive risk to health and safety, and there was no evidence that these guards knew that merely attaching Hope to the restraining bar posed such a risk.