Lombardo v. City of St. Louis

Incident Summary & Facts

On December 8, 2015, St. Louis police arrested Nicholas Gilbert for trespassing in a condemned building and failing to appear in court for a traffic ticket, and placed him in a holding cell. An officer saw Gilbert tie a piece of clothing around the cell bars and put it around his neck, in an apparent attempt to hang himself. Three officers entered. When one grabbed his wrist to handcuff him, Gilbert evaded him and began to struggle. The officers brought Gilbert, who was 5‘3” and 160 pounds, down to a kneeling position over a concrete bench and handcuffed his arms behind his back. Gilbert reared back, kicked the officers, and hit his head on the bench. After he kicked an officer in the groin, the officers called for help and leg shackles, and two officers shackled his legs while he kept struggling.

With six officers then in the cell, Gilbert, now handcuffed and in leg irons, was moved to a prone position face down on the floor. Three officers held his limbs at the shoulders, biceps, and legs, and at least one other put pressure on his back and torso. Gilbert tried to raise his chest, saying, “It hurts. Stop.” After 15 minutes of struggling in this position, his breathing became abnormal and he stopped moving. Officers found no pulse, began CPR, and Gilbert was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

Gilbert’s parents sued for excessive force. The district court granted summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds. The Eighth Circuit affirmed on the different ground that no excessive force was used. The Supreme Court decided the case per curiam on the petition for certiorari.

Core Legal Issue

Whether the Eighth Circuit applied the careful, context-specific objective-reasonableness inquiry required by Graham v. Connor and Kingsley v. Hendrickson, or instead treated prone restraint of a resisting detainee as reasonable as a matter of law, regardless of its kind, intensity, duration, or surrounding circumstances.

The Holding

The Court granted certiorari, vacated the Eighth Circuit’s judgment, and remanded so that the court could conduct an inquiry that “clearly attends to the facts and circumstances.” The Court expressed no view on whether the force was excessive or whether the right was clearly established.

The Court’s Analysis:

• The Court declined to decide whether the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment governs a pretrial detainee’s claim. Under either, the question is whether the force was objectively unreasonable in light of the facts and circumstances of the particular case, a standard courts “cannot apply … mechanically.”
• It listed the Kingsley factors: the relationship between the need for force and the amount used; the extent of injury; any effort to temper or limit force; the severity of the security problem; the threat reasonably perceived; and whether the subject was actively resisting.
• The Eighth Circuit had called “insignificant” the facts that Gilbert was already handcuffed and leg-shackled when placed prone and was held there for 15 minutes. The Supreme Court said such details “could matter” at summary judgment.
• Viewed favorably to the plaintiffs, the record showed that officers pressed on Gilbert’s back even though St. Louis instructs officers that pressing on a prone subject’s back can cause suffocation. Well-known police guidance recommends getting a subject off his stomach once handcuffed and notes that a prone suspect’s struggles may reflect oxygen deficiency “rather than a desire to disobey officers’ commands.”
• Treating “ongoing resistance” as controlling as a matter of law would be a per se rule that “would contravene the careful, context-specific analysis required by this Court’s excessive force precedent.”
• Dissent (Alito, J., joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, JJ.): The dissent argued that the Eighth Circuit applied the correct standard and that the per curiam unfairly read it as adopting a per se rule. It would have granted plenary review and decided whether the record supported summary judgment, noting both Gilbert’s “fierce and prolonged resistance” and the serious injuries and conflicting medical evidence on cause of death.