Which law enforcement officers who responded to Jan. 6 have been officially ruled line‑of‑duty deaths, and by which bodies?

1. The case of Jeffrey L. Smith — local and federal recognition

Jeffrey L. Smith, a Metropolitan Police Department officer who assisted Capitol Police on Jan. 6 and died by suicide nine days later, was officially declared a line‑of‑duty death by the District of Columbia on March 7, 2022, after a petition by his widow and review that cited occupational exposure to trauma on Jan. 6 as the precipitating event; that designation was later affirmed at the federal level when the Attorney General of the United States ruled Smith’s death line‑of‑duty in August 2023, a decision referenced in reporting and summaries of Smith’s posthumous awards and benefits ^{[1] [3]}.

2. Howard Liebengood — the DOJ’s PSOB determination

Howard Liebengood, a Capitol Police official who died by suicide months after the attack, was determined to be a line‑of‑duty death by the Justice Department’s Public Safety Officers’ Benefits program, a federal certification that makes surviving family eligible for federal benefits; contemporary news reporting framed the PSOB decision as the federal determination that unlocked health and financial benefits for Liebengood’s family ^{[2] [3]}.

3. Brian Sicknick and other contested rulings

Officer Brian Sicknick’s death remains in a different category: the U.S. Capitol Police initially stated Sicknick “passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty” after engaging with protesters, but later medical reporting and examinations revised the forensic picture—medical experts and the D.C. medical examiner attributed his death to natural causes (stroke), and public summaries note that Sicknick’s death was not uniformly classified as a line‑of‑duty fatality in the same administrative channels that handled other post‑Jan. 6 deaths ^{[4] [1] [5]}. Reporting and fact‑checks from earlier phases of the aftermath also observed that several officers who died by suicide in the weeks and months after Jan. 6 had not initially been uniformly designated as line‑of‑duty deaths, a discrepancy that has shifted as petitions and federal reviews produced later PSOB and Attorney General rulings for some individuals ^{[4] [3]}.

4. Why designations differ and how decisions are made

Line‑of‑duty determinations carry legal and financial consequences and can be made by different authorities — local jurisdictions, the Department of Justice’s PSOB program, and ultimately federal officials including the Attorney General — and they depend on medical findings, administrative petitions from families, and evolving interpretations of whether occupational trauma was the proximate cause of death; journalists and fact‑checkers have documented that early statements, medical examiner reports, and later administrative rulings sometimes pointed in different directions, meaning official recognition unfolded unevenly over time ^{[1] [2] [4]}.

5. The record as of available reporting and outstanding limits

Based on the sources reviewed, the confirmed official line‑of‑duty rulings are Jeffrey L. Smith (District of Columbia determination March 7, 2022; later recognized at the federal/Attorney General level) and Howard Liebengood (Justice Department PSOB determination), while Brian Sicknick’s death and other post‑riot suicides occupy a more contested space where initial agency statements, medical examiner findings, and administrative benefit rulings do not uniformly align; reporting and fact‑checks note earlier statements that none of the suicides had been officially designated as line‑of‑duty at certain dates, but subsequent federal determinations changed that picture for at least Smith and Liebengood ^{[1] [2] [4] [3]}. Where sources conflict on timing or status, the reporting indicates the divergence stems from the sequence of medical findings, family petitions, and federal PSOB/Attorney General reviews rather than a single unified pronouncement ^{[4] [1] [2]}.