The U.S. Supreme Court has revived a lawsuit filed by the parents of a homeless man who died in police custody in Missouri that accused officers of using excessive force in the moments before their son died handcuffed and shackled in a cell.
The justices, in an unsigned decision, threw out a lower court ruling in favor of police that had concluded excessive force was not used, meaning the lawsuit was over.
Nicholas Gilbert, aged 27, died in 2015 in a St. Louis police holding cell after six officers restrained him for 15 minutes, handcuffing him, shackling his legs and placing him face down on the ground.
The Supreme Court’s decision said the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had not clearly analyzed whether the police use of a “prone restraint” was constitutional and asked the lower court to revisit the issue.
The civil rights lawsuit filed by Bryan Gilbert and Jody Lombardo accused the officers of violating the U.S. Constitution’s 4th Amendment protections against unlawful searches and seizures.
The Supreme Court stated commonly used police guidance informs officers of the suffocation risks and “indicates that the struggles of a prone suspect may be due to oxygen deficiency” rather than resistance,.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the decision.
The officers had asserted a legal doctrine called qualified immunity that protects police and other types of government officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances.
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