Supreme court overturns ruling in St. Louis Police and Gilbert Case

The Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling in a case about whether St. Louis police used excessive force on a man who died after officers handcuffed him and put their weight on his back inside a jail cell, on Monday.

Police arrested Nicholas Gilbert, a 27-year-old homeless man, in 2015 on suspicion of trespassing and failure to appear in court for an outstanding traffic ticket. After this, he was booked, handcuffed, and shackled as six officers used their weight to subdue him. Gilbert died during the altercation.

The appeal, filed at the Supreme Court in September, came at a time of severe tension between police and communities of color following incidents in which Black people were killed in interactions with officers. Gilbert was white, though his parents noted the similarities between their son’s death and that of George Floyd, the Black man killed by Minneapolis police last year.