Hope v. Pelzer’s Empirical Analysis
240 F.3d 975 · 2001
Citation profile
12 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Hope v. Pelzer (2002), Morgan v. Swanson (2011)
12 federal appellate ·
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Estelle v. Gamble · Farmer v. Brennan · County of Sacramento v. Lewis
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“While the DOC claims that Hope would have been released from the hitching post had he asked to return to work, the evidence suggests this is not the case. First, Hope never refused to work. During the May incident, he was the victim in an altercation on the work site, but he never refused to do his job. During the June incident, Hope was involved in an altercation with prison guards. There is nothing in the record, however, claiming that he refused to work or encouraged other inmates to refuse to work. Therefore, it is not clear that the solution to his hitching post problem was to ask to return to work. Second, Hope was placed in a car and driven back to Limestone to be cuffed to the hitching post on both occasions. Given the facts, it is improbable that had Hope said, `I want to go back to work,' a prison guard would have left his post at Limestone to drive Hope back to the work site. It is more likely that the guards left Hope on the post until his work detail returned to teach the other inmates a lesson.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hope v. Pelzer“the policy and practice of cuffing an inmate to a hitching post or similar stationary object for a period of time that surpasses that necessary to quell a threat or restore order is a violation of the Eighth Amendment.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hope v. Pelzer
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.