Walter HILL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Joe S. HOPPER, Commissioner of Alabama Department of Corrections, Defendant-Appellee

Appellant Walter Hill, an Alabama inmate convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, challenges on appeal the district court’s dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 assault upon the constitutionality of electrocution as a means of execution. The State of Alabama intends to execute Hill by means of electrocution on May 2, 1997. On March 31, 1997, Appellant Hill filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama charging that the scheduled electrocution constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Among…