Yellow police tape marks off a crime scene.
PHILADELPHIA – A Malvern Police Department officer who shot and killed a troubled transgender woman will face excessive force claims, a Pennsylvania federal judge has ruled while tossing much of the rest of the lawsuit.
Judge Mia Roberts Perez on Oct. 19 ruled on motions for summary judgment in the case surrounding the death of Maddie Hofmann, who was killed following a struggle inside her home while officers conducted a welfare check. She’d answered the door with a gun and put it back in her home.
But she went back for it later, leading Joseph Capuano to grab her at the foot of her stairs. Corporal Patrick Dougherty could not see who controlled the gun and told Capuano to move from his line of fire. He fired three shots, killing Hofmann.
Though the incident was captured on body-cam footage, there remain questions of whether Dougherty is liable for excessive force and assault and battery, Perez ruled.
“There is no genuine dispute that the situation Dougherty encountered was dangerous. Hofmann had regained possession of the firearm, and she and Capuano were physically struggling over it near the foot of the stairs,” Perez wrote.
“A reasonable officer need not wait for a firearm to discharge before responding to an imminent threat. The dispute concerns what Dougherty could reasonably perceive about the control and direction of the firearm when he decided to shoot.”
Dougherty called the struggle for the gun a “stalemate” with an increasing likelihood that the gun would accidentally discharge. Officer Jason Listmeier backed the account that Hofmann was moving toward Dougherty and “sweeping up” when Capuano separated from her. Capuano, meanwhile, could not say where the firearm was pointed when the shooting occurred.
A plaintiff’s expert is testifying that the barrel was never pointed toward Dougherty before he shot. Since body-cam footage can’t verify either account, Perez is leaving the issue up to a jury, should the case not settle before then.
A co-worker called Malvern PD on May 19, 2022, with concerns that Hofmann was having a mental health crisis while in the process of transitioning and that she had written a “goodbye” message. When officers arrived, Hofmann was screaming from behind a closed door. She opened it and, while holding the gun, said she was in a “crisis situation” and that the welfare check was being recorded on her phone and streamed on Twitter.
Officers retreated and pulled their weapons, and Hofmann put the gun back in the home. But Capuano began to approach Hofmann, who stated she didn’t want to be touched and went back toward the gun.
The Chester County District Attorney’s Office declared the shooting justified weeks later. It was possible Hofmann had her finger on the trigger of the gun when Dougherty shot, a press release said.
The ensuing lawsuit made several claims for relief, including one under the Americans with Disabilities Act that Perez dismissed. It didn’t matter that officers hadn’t received crisis-intervention training, Perez said, because that doesn’t establish that policymakers knew the PD’s practices were “substantially likely to deny reasonable accommodations to persons with mental disabilities.”
Perez also tossed a claim under the Fourth Amendment and failure-to-train allegations against Malvern.
