He Spent 6 Days in Feces Covered Cell. Supreme Court Says He Can Sue His Jailers | Hacker News Reader

He Spent 6 Days in Feces Covered Cell. Supreme Court Says He Can Sue His Jailers

themarshallproject.org

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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 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_opin...

It 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.

One has to wonder if they could then find enough people to staff such an institution.

If they can't staff an institution that apparently to require psychopaths to do the job, maybe they should undergo reform?

Not law enforcement. Corrections. It attracts a different type of person, and a different type of psychopathy.

Corrections, yes. But Law Enforcement too.

Psychopathy and Sadism abound in both fields.

That'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.

The 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.

How is it solved elsewhere? I mean I have not heard of, say, German cops getting away with pretty much anything, thus probably not having the “cushion” mentioned.

> I mean I have not heard of, say, German cops getting away with pretty much anything, thus probably not having the “cushion” mentioned.

German cops actually get away with a lot, too. There are cases where excessive violence is used (at least imo). However, it is not common. Same should be true for prison guard. I believe the biggest difference is that both are not thrown into the job after a few weeks of training, but after about three years of training (at least police training takes that long).

This is all just my opinion: I'm white male in my mid 30s and rarely have to deal with police, so obviously others might paint a different picture.

EDIT: Most cases in which someone files a complaint are never closed (Aquitted or convicted). Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizeigewalt

Clicked the link, saw the face tattoos, closed the tab.

Oh I see, so because someone chooses to get facial tattoos they don't deserve to be treated like a human being?

I forgot that human rights are just guidelines, my bad.

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