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> In that case, in 2002, a man named Larry Hope sued Alabama prison officials for chaining him, shirtless, to a hitching post designed for livestock. For seven
by zachrose 5y ago
> In that case, in 2002, a man named Larry Hope sued Alabama prison officials for chaining him, shirtless, to a hitching post designed for livestock. For seven hours in the hot Southern sun, Hope had minimal water and no bathroom breaks. At one point, Hope alleged, a guard taunted him by giving water to the dogs from the prison’s K-9 unit. When Hope conceded he was thirsty enough that he would drink it after the dogs, the guard kicked it over so it spilled onto the ground.
Wild that Justices Thomas, Rehnquist and Scalia dissented with the court, finding that the hitching post was not obviously cruel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_v._Pelzer#Dissenting_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_v._Pelzer#Dissenting_opin...
- sheepdestroyer 5y agoIt would be nice to periodically screen law enforcers (edit: and correctional officers) for psychopathy. Maybe recrutement should actively try to reject those most likely to be authoritarian bullies with power complexes.
- zachrose 5y agoOne has to wonder if they could then find enough people to staff such an institution.
- Natfan 5y agoIf they can't staff an institution that apparently to require psychopaths to do the job, maybe they should undergo reform?
- pyuser583 5y agoNot law enforcement. Corrections. It attracts a different type of person, and a different type of psychopathy.
- bradknowles 5y agoCorrections, yes. But Law Enforcement too. Psychopathy and Sadism abound in both fields.
- nickcox 5y agoThat's basically all of them though? I think the single most important qualification for being a law enforcement or correctional officer should be not wanting to be a law enforcement or correctional officer.
- setr 5y agoThe dissenting argument isn’t unreasonable — it’s not that the total event wasn’t cruel, but the restraining bar in and of itself wasn’t obviously cruel. And his reduction stems from apparently the wrong guards are being sued..? I’m not clear why the gaurds who actually committed the abuse aren’t being sued, rather than two unrelated actors and one whose sole involvement was the attachment to the restraining bar. Presumably they did other things, but not the extreme one pushing the lawsuit as a constitutional violation. It seems to me Thomas’s contention is the selected guards didn’t themselves engage in anything that “severe” — not that no cruelty occurred, or that the event in total was not cruel.