 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.