The Supreme Court today gave an Illinois man a new chance to sue a Chicago suburb and its police officers who arrested him on trumped up charges and kept him in jail for nearly seven weeks, the Associated Press reports. The 6-2 ruling ordered the federal appeals court in Chicago to reconsider a lawsuit filed by Elijah Manuel against the city of Joliet.
Police arrested him in 2011 and falsely claimed he was in possession of the illegal drug ecstasy. The police persuaded a prosecutor that Manuel had illegal drugs and the prosecutor took the case to a grand jury and obtained an indictment. The prosecutors later saw a police lab report showing that the pills Manuel had were vitamins. The indictment was dismissed. Manuel lost a lawsuit in the lower courts.