Deadly Force Against an Unarmed Attacker: A Reasonably Perceived Threat of Serious Physical Harm Is Enough

Chanda Callaway v. Mason Adcock · United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit · September 22, 2026

Introduction

Chanda Callaway, administrator of Channing Spivey’s estate, sued police officer Mason Adcock under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after Adcock fatally shot Spivey. Spivey had aggressive brain cancer and, following treatment and the cessation of his medications, experienced increasingly irrational and violent behavior. The central question was whether Adcock used excessive force under the Fourth Amendment when he shot Spivey, who was unarmed, during a rapidly unfolding confrontation outside Adcock’s home.

The district court granted Adcock summary judgment on qualified-immunity grounds. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed, but resolved the appeal at the first step of the qualified-immunity inquiry: on the undisputed material facts, the shooting did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Summary of the Opinion

Emergency personnel responding to calls for medical help waited for a deputy because Spivey was reportedly combative. After Deputy Penny arrived, Spivey shattered the rear window of Penny’s vehicle, briefly fell when tased, then shattered an ambulance windshield with his fists. He pursued Penny despite repeated orders and warnings. Penny fled up Adcock’s driveway calling for help.

Adcock had not witnessed those earlier attacks. He did see an armed, frightened deputy being pursued by a blood-covered Spivey; heard that a taser had not worked; and saw Spivey disregard repeated commands. Adcock first tried to restrain Spivey physically. According to uncontradicted evidence, Spivey struck him several times, including a blow to the head that nearly rendered him unconscious. After Adcock pushed him away, Spivey advanced again from approximately six feet away. Adcock fired, fatally wounding him.

The court held that a reasonable officer in Adcock’s position could have perceived a threat of serious physical harm or death to himself or others. Spivey’s lack of a conventional weapon did not make deadly force categorically unreasonable. The court affirmed without deciding whether, even if a constitutional violation had occurred, existing law clearly established it.

Analysis

The governing rule: a reasonable perception of danger

The opinion’s central clarification is that the inquiry is not whether a court, reconstructing events afterward, finds that an attacker actually posed a threat. It is whether an officer with the information available at the time could reasonably have perceived a threat of serious physical harm or death. This permits a reasonable mistake about danger; it does not turn an officer’s subjective fear into a sufficient justification.

The court assessed the whole encounter rather than treating any fact as decisive. Spivey was unarmed, but he had pursued an armed deputy, ignored numerous warnings, resisted an attempted restraint, landed a powerful head blow, and advanced again at close range. Adcock also knew that his wife, stepson, and Bloodsworth were inside the nearby house. The court emphasized the speed of events: shots were fired roughly 37 seconds after Adcock’s voice was first heard on the 911 recording.

Precedents cited

Deadly force and on-scene judgment. Tennessee v. Garner supplied the foundational rule permitting deadly force where an officer has probable cause to believe a person poses a threat of serious physical harm to the officer or others. The opinion stressed that the rule concerns threatened harm, not merely escape or whether an injury has already occurred. Scott v. Harris, Saucier v. Katz, and Kisela v. Hughes reinforced the need to judge force from the on-scene perspective, without hindsight, when officers must make split-second decisions. The court also invoked Graham for the description of circumstances that are “tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving.”

Settle v. Collier was especially important. There, an officer shot a driver after the driver put a truck in gear, although the truck had not moved. The question was whether the officer could reasonably have perceived that he was in its path—not whether hindsight proved he was. Applying that distinction here, the court rejected the estate’s focus on whether Spivey actually posed a grave threat. Singletary v. Vargas, Hammett v. Paulding Cnty., Prosper v. Martin, and Shaw v. City of Selma likewise informed the court’s threat-based, objective-reasonableness analysis. The opinion expressly clarified a wording slip in Shaw v. City of Selma: “serious” modifies the physical harm or injury threatened, rather than establishing a separate requirement of a “serious threat.”

Danger from an unarmed person. Bradley v. Benton recognized that a fist or foot can be used to apply deadly force; the presence of a gun or knife is not indispensable to the inquiry. McCormick v. City of Fort Lauderdale also informed the court’s consideration of the risk that an attacker could overpower an officer and gain access to the officer’s firearm. Decisions from other circuits illustrated how similar risks can arise in physical struggles: Davenport v. Causey addressed potentially deadly closed-fisted blows, while Waid v. County of Lyon, Orr v. Copeland, and Johnson v. City of Philadelphia considered attacks on officers and possible access to their weapons. These cases supported rejecting the estate’s proposed practical distinction between armed and unarmed attackers.

Mental crisis and unpredictability. The court cited Swinford v. Santos, Prosper v. Martin, Shaw v. City of Selma, Long v. Slaton, and Kesinger as cases considering aberrant behavior when evaluating danger. The point was not that mental illness authorizes deadly force. Rather, conduct indicating that a violent person cannot be deterred by commands can affect what a reasonable officer perceives. As Shaw v. City of Selma put it, tragedy does not by itself establish constitutional unreasonableness.

Information available to Adcock. United States v. Hensley and Nnadi v. Richter supported the unremarkable proposition that an officer may act on information actually communicated by others. Penley v. Eslinger illustrated its application in an excessive-force setting. But the panel did not decide whether the separate “collective knowledge” doctrine, discussed in connection with Terrell v. Smith and Tillis ex rel. Wuenschel v. Brown, would attribute to Adcock everything Penny knew. Instead, it relied on what Adcock himself saw and heard, including Penny’s frightened conduct and statement that the taser had failed. Consistent with Hernandez v. Mesa, facts learned only after the shooting could not justify it retroactively.

Probable cause and proof at summary judgment. Relying on District of Columbia v. Wesby, Davis v. City of Apopka, and Maryland v. Pringle, the court explained that probable cause is a practical, less-than-more-likely-than-not threshold: a substantial chance, not conclusive proof, is sufficient. For the procedural inquiry, Tolan v. Cotton and Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. required the court to credit the estate’s evidence and draw supportable inferences in its favor. Yet Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc. and Crawford-El v. Britton made clear that attacks on a witness’s credibility, without contrary affirmative evidence, do not themselves create a trial-worthy factual dispute. Singletary v. Vargas and Kesinger were particularly relevant where a witness had not observed a pivotal part of an encounter.

Why the factual disputes did not change the result

The estate argued that two witnesses, Westly Spivey and Justin Robinson, contradicted accounts that Spivey struck Adcock. The panel examined their depositions and found that neither had testified that no blow occurred. They lost sight of Spivey before reaching a position from which they could see the final moments in Adcock’s yard. Their failure to see an earlier fight therefore did not contradict Penny’s and Adcock’s accounts. A contemporaneous EMS report and a photograph showing an injury near Adcock’s temple further supported those accounts. The court rejected the suggestion that the period outside the witnesses’ view was necessarily too short for several punches.

Minor differences among witnesses—for example, precisely how Adcock defended himself or how far he had pushed Spivey back—did not create a material dispute. Under the panel’s analysis, the consequential facts were that Spivey struck Adcock and was advancing again at close range when Adcock fired. The opinion also criticized the estate’s briefing for asserting that Westly and Robinson had testified that Spivey never struck Adcock when their depositions did not say so.

The court rejected two further arguments. First, Adcock’s initial invocation of the Fifth Amendment during parts of an earlier deposition did not, on this record, supply evidence defeating summary judgment: he later answered questions in a second deposition well before discovery closed. The panel distinguished the discovery abuse addressed in United States v. Certain Real Prop. & Premises and drew on Avirgan v. Hull in explaining why an adverse inference cannot simply replace necessary evidence. Second, the possibility that Westly and Robinson might help restrain Spivey did not require Adcock to wait. He did not know they had offered Penny help, and a reasonable officer facing an imminent attack need not rely on uncertain assistance arriving in time.

Impact

The decision gives future courts a detailed application of the rule that unarmed does not mean harmless. Serious physical harm may reasonably be feared from a person’s fists, relative size, demonstrated violence, or potential to take an officer’s weapon. Conversely, it establishes no automatic license to shoot an unarmed or mentally ill person: the justification depends on the particular threat reasonably perceptible at the moment force is used.

The opinion is also significant for how excessive-force claims are proved. Video or audio timing, contemporaneous medical records, photographs, and the limits of each witness’s vantage point can determine whether a purported factual dispute is genuine. Finally, because the panel found no constitutional violation, its judgment does not decide what prior law clearly established about a different confrontation.

Complex Concepts Simplified

• Objective reasonableness: What an officer in the same position could reasonably think and do with the information then available—not simply what this officer feared or what later proved true.
• Probable cause in this setting: A reasonable, practical basis to believe there is a substantial chance of serious physical harm or death; certainty is unnecessary.
• Qualified immunity’s two steps: A plaintiff must show both a constitutional violation and that the violated rule was clearly established. Failure at the first step ended this appeal.
• Genuine dispute of material fact: A disagreement supported by evidence about a fact capable of affecting the outcome. Speculation, or a witness’s inability to see an event, does not necessarily create one.
• Collective knowledge: A doctrine that can attribute information held by one officer to another in some settings. The court left its applicability here unresolved and considered only information Adcock actually received or perceived.

Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit held that Adcock’s use of deadly force was constitutionally reasonable because an officer in his position could have perceived an imminent threat of serious physical harm or death. Its broader lesson is a carefully bounded one: neither an attacker’s lack of a weapon nor the tragedy of a medical and mental-health crisis replaces a fact-specific assessment of the danger confronting an officer at the moment of the shooting.