Objective Reasonableness Turns on the Officer’s Reasonable Perception of a Deadly Threat, Even if Weapon Possession Is Disputed

Introduction

In Estate of Justin Paul Smith v. City of Philadelphia (3d Cir. Apr. 23, 2026) (nonprecedential), the Estate of Justin Paul Smith and family members sued the City of Philadelphia and Officer Curt McKee after McKee shot and killed Smith while responding to a 911-driven domestic/home-intrusion scenario. The appeal focused on the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to McKee on the Estate’s federal excessive-force claim under the Fourth Amendment.

The core issues were: (1) whether genuine disputes of material fact precluded summary judgment, particularly regarding whether Smith actually had a knife; and (2) whether McKee’s use of deadly force was “objectively reasonable” given the rapidly evolving circumstances captured in bodyworn camera footage and corroborated by other evidence.

Summary of the Opinion

The Third Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Officer McKee. Applying the Fourth Amendment objective-reasonableness framework, the court held that McKee acted reasonably when he used lethal force after (a) encountering indications of a dangerous home intrusion involving a distressed resident and a crying child, (b) facing Smith’s noncompliance with commands to show his hands, (c) attempting non-lethal force first (a taser), and (d) perceiving that Smith grabbed a knife and lunged toward him from only a few feet away.

Critically, the panel concluded that uncertainty over whether Smith in fact possessed a knife was not material because the dispositive question was whether McKee’s belief that Smith had a knife—and that Smith posed an imminent deadly threat—was reasonable under the circumstances. The court also rejected theories that liability could be based on a taser malfunction or on an asserted failure to retreat further.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

• Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985)
  The court treated Garner as the foundational deadly-force rule: an officer may not use deadly force unless there is good reason (probable cause) to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. Here, the panel mapped the facts—noncompliance, close distance, perceived knife, charging movement, and presence of residents/children—onto Garner’s “significant threat” criterion.
• Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989)
  The court relied on Graham for the objective-reasonableness standard and its caution against judging police use of force with hindsight. Graham also supplies the analytic factors (including the immediacy of the threat), which the panel invoked both directly and through later Third Circuit formulations.
• Lamont v. New Jersey, 637 F.3d 177 (3d Cir. 2011)
  Lamont did two key jobs in the opinion. First, it reiterated that reasonableness is assessed from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene. Second, it supplied the specific doctrinal bridge for “reasonable mistake” cases: “an officer who uses deadly force in the mistaken belief that a suspect is armed will be forgiven so long as the mistake is reasonable and the circumstances otherwise justify the use of such force.” That principle allowed the panel to treat the “did Smith actually have a knife?” dispute as potentially immaterial if McKee reasonably perceived a knife and imminent danger.
• Santini v. Fuentes, 795 F.3d 410 (3d Cir. 2015)
  The panel cited Santini for the Third Circuit’s articulation of Graham’s key factor: whether the suspect posed an imminent threat to officer or public safety. It then applied that threat-centric frame to the close-range lunge and perceived weapon.
• City & County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 575 U.S. 600 (2015)
  Sheehan supported two propositions: (1) deadly force may be justified where a suspect charges officers with a knife; and (2) officers are not required, in the moment, to exhaust every possible alternative or retreat as a prerequisite to using deadly force. The court used Sheehan to rebut the Estate’s “adequate retreat” and de-escalation-by-exhaustion arguments.
• Abraham v. Raso, 183 F.3d 279 (3d Cir. 1999) (quoting Scott v. Henrich, 39 F.3d 912 (9th Cir. 1994))
  Abraham supplied the Third Circuit’s cautionary principle for summary judgment in fatal-force cases: because the decedent cannot testify, courts must scrutinize whether circumstantial evidence could discredit the officer’s account and permit a rational factfinder to find unreasonableness. The panel applied that safeguard and concluded it did not help the Estate because corroborating evidence (resident confirmation, recovered knife, DNA evidence) supported McKee’s perception.
• Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574 (1986)
  This case undergirded the court’s rejection of generic, non-specific challenges to the statement of material facts (e.g., “cannot be clearly heard” assertions about bodycam audio) as insufficient to create a genuine dispute of material fact at summary judgment—especially where the appellate court reviewed the bodycam footage itself.
• County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998)
  The court cited Lewis for the limit that “mere negligence” does not establish constitutional liability. This served to defeat the Estate’s attempt to reframe the taser malfunction (or hypothesized negligence in its deployment) as Fourth Amendment excessive force.
• Johnson v. City of Philadelphia, 837 F.3d 343 (3d Cir. 2016)
  The court clarified that 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§ 8301 and 8302 are procedural vehicles (wrongful death and survival) for damages, not freestanding substantive causes of action—rejecting the Estate’s characterization of them as independent “claims.”
• CoreCivic, Inc. v. Governor of N.J., 145 F.4th 315 (3d Cir. 2025)
  Cited for the standard of review: de novo review of summary judgment on appeal.

Legal Reasoning

1. Framing the constitutional question as objective reasonableness under fast-moving conditions.
   The court anchored its analysis in Graham v. Connor and Lamont v. New Jersey: what matters is what a reasonable officer would do in a tense, uncertain, rapidly evolving encounter, not what might appear optimal in hindsight.
2. Threat assessment drove the outcome.
   The panel emphasized the indicators of danger before the shooting: a resident yelling for Smith to leave, a crying child, Smith’s refusal to show his hands, his movement toward McKee, and the escalation to a perceived knife grab and lunge at close range. Under Tennessee v. Garner and Santini v. Fuentes, these facts supplied probable cause to believe Smith posed a significant, imminent threat of serious harm.
3. The knife dispute was treated as non-material because perception—if reasonable—controls.
   Although “not definitively established whether Smith in fact possessed a knife,” the court held it need not resolve that question because Lamont v. New Jersey allows deadly-force justification where the officer reasonably (even if mistakenly) believes the suspect is armed, so long as the surrounding circumstances justify the force.
4. Summary judgment caution in fatal-force cases was satisfied, not ignored.
   Under Abraham v. Raso, the court did not simply accept the officer’s narrative; it examined whether circumstantial evidence could discredit it. Here, corroboration (resident’s observation, recovered knife location, and “overwhelming” DNA evidence) reinforced McKee’s account and perception, leaving no basis for a rational jury to find the shooting unreasonable.
5. Alternative tactics theories (taser; retreat) did not create constitutional liability.
   The Estate’s “he should have used a taser” argument failed because the court found no legal basis to impose Fourth Amendment liability for a failed taser deployment, and in any event County of Sacramento v. Lewis forecloses constitutional liability based on mere negligence. The “retreat” argument failed factually (bodycam showed backing up) and legally because City & County of San Francisco v. Sheehan rejects an obligation to retreat or exhaust every option in a split-second confrontation.
6. Qualified immunity was not reached because no constitutional violation was shown.
   Having found the force reasonable, the court—like the District Court—did not address qualified immunity.

Impact

Although expressly “NONPRECEDENTIAL,” the opinion is instructive in several recurring Third Circuit excessive-force contexts:

• Materiality of weapon disputes: Litigants should expect courts to focus on the reasonableness of the officer’s perception of a weapon and imminent threat, not solely on post hoc certainty about whether the decedent actually held the weapon.
• Fatal-force summary judgment practice: The decision reinforces that Abraham v. Raso requires careful scrutiny, but also shows what will satisfy that scrutiny: corroborating civilian statements, physical evidence, and video can eliminate the inferential space needed for a jury to disbelieve the officer.
• Limits of “alternative tactics” theories: Arguments that an officer should have used a different tool (e.g., taser) or retreated further are unlikely to succeed absent authority tying those tactical critiques to Fourth Amendment unreasonableness—and absent evidence that the officer’s choice was objectively unreasonable given an imminent threat.
• Clarifying state-law pleading: The brief discussion of 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§ 8301, 8302 is a reminder that wrongful death and survival statutes are vehicles for damages, not independent substantive torts or federal-rights claims.

Complex Concepts Simplified

• “Objective reasonableness” (Fourth Amendment): The court asks what a reasonable officer would do in the same situation, based on what the officer perceived at the time—not what later investigation proves and not what might have been the best possible choice.
• “Material fact” at summary judgment: A fact dispute matters only if it could change the outcome under the governing law. Here, even if the parties disputed whether Smith actually held a knife, that dispute did not change the legal question the court deemed dispositive: whether McKee reasonably believed Smith posed an imminent deadly threat.
• “Reasonable mistake” about a weapon: If an officer reasonably (not recklessly or unreasonably) believes a suspect is armed and about to cause serious harm, the law can deem deadly force justified even if the suspect ultimately turns out to be unarmed.
• “No constitutional liability for negligence”: Even if an officer made a careless error (for example, if a tool malfunction were hypothetically linked to negligent handling), that alone generally does not amount to a constitutional violation.
• Wrongful death vs. survival actions (Pennsylvania): These statutes describe who can recover damages and what damages may be recovered after a death; they do not, by themselves, create the underlying legal wrong.

Conclusion

The Third Circuit affirmed summary judgment because, on the undisputed (and corroborated) record, Officer McKee faced a rapidly escalating encounter in a home with vulnerable occupants, attempted non-lethal force, and then used deadly force only when he reasonably perceived a close-range knife threat and a lunge. The opinion’s most salient doctrinal takeaway is its treatment of weapon-possession uncertainty as non-dispositive where the officer’s perception of an imminent deadly threat is reasonable and supported by circumstantial evidence—while also underscoring the heightened evidentiary caution required in fatal-force cases under Abraham v. Raso.