I haven't followed the Daniel Penny trial especially closely, but this morning he was acquitted of killing Jordan Neely in a subway incident last year:
A Manhattan jury found Penny, 26 years old, not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the killing of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator with a history of mental illness.
After several days of deliberation last week, jurors were deadlocked on second-degree manslaughter, a more serious charge that would have required they find he acted recklessly—as opposed to with negligence—and caused Neely’s death. A judge granted prosecutors’ request to dismiss that charge so that jurors could move on to deliberations on the lesser offense.
This doesn't make any sense. It means there were at least some jurors who wanted to convict Penny on the more serious charge but quickly agreed to acquit him of the lesser charge. What's the explanation for that?
It's possible, of course, that "deadlocked" means there was one holdout who wanted to convict, but after a weekend to stew about it decided, fuck it, and went along with the majority on the lesser charge just to get it over with. Weariness with the whole affair is often a powerful motivation for finally getting a unanimous verdict in court cases.
See "Juror #2."
Gross. He murdered someone.
Nonsense.
He protected himself and others from a man who was having a mental breakdown and threatening others.
We can pity Jordan Neely given his obvious psychiatric issues will realizing that Daniel Perry was not a murderer. The real culprits here are those who still refuse to institutionalize people like Jordan Neely.
who refused?
The trick of the matter is that he was trained to kill, and with that training knew what he was doing was dangerous and life threatening.
But apparently that doesn't matter.
I agree that adds a level of complexity to the discussion. But, hypothetically, if any measures he used short of the choke hold (or whatever it was) were unsuccessful in subduing Neely, would he be justified in using the chokehold? Even though it may prove lethal? Hypothetically, I would say yes, if it was agreed other passengers' lives were threatened by Neely.
"But, hypothetically, if any measures he used short of the choke hold (or whatever it was) were unsuccessful in subduing Neely, would he be justified in using the chokehold?"
Yet he didn't use those less dangerous methods. That's the whole rub of it.
It's the same reason people are rightfully angry when a savage police officer decides to shoot someone without first attempting less lethal means in situations were those should be attempted first, and then you get people arguing "well, what if he couldn't restrain someone without using lethal force, then it should be A OK if he shots someone dead from the get go" .
No one should get the benefit of the hypothetical case where level of force 10 would be acceptable, if in the real world they never bothered trying levels 1-9 first.
+1
+1
Negative. The use of force is only proportional to what is present. If Neely is loud, and bizarre, and making people uncomfortable, no force warranted. If he is touching, grabbing, or becoming dangerous to himself, restraint should be utilized. If he is attacking, striking, gouging, a further step up in force is warranted. The Marine knew this use of force continuum, and instead applied a killing move (airway manipulation) and well killed Neely. I admit that I do not know the particulars, but I can be sure that almost all the techniques Penny knew were killing moves.
It's not a good look. And as a Marine he should have at least known what to be cognizant for and then what emergency aid to render. Again I don't know if this occurred.
You are legally incorrect.
1. There is no requirement that levels of force be proportional. For example, if someone pulls a gun in an argument without pulling the trigger (so no force) it is perfectly legal to kill him by shooting him, baseball bat to the head, or dropping a car on him - any level of force at all.
2. There is no need to wait for someone to physically attack to use deadly force. If there was, smaller people works be at a huge disadvantage. A 5' 4" woman is unlikely to be able to pull a gun and defend herself from a 6' 4" man if she has to wait for him to grab her. True threats that reasonably lead someone to believe that he or others is in danger of significant physical harm is enough to justify use of physical force including deadly force.
3. The idea that there is a continuum of force that Perry could have used is a fantasy. In a situation like that if you start at some theoretical level 1 and it does not work you may not get a chance to escalate to level 2. You may end up dead first. Remember, Perry had no way of knowing how strong Neely was, if he knew how to fight, or if he had a weapon.
Incorrect. A weapon pointed IS deadly force. If you watch enough news clips you'll discern that police weapons generally only point at weapons not at people or at least that is the training I have received.
The continuum level of force is standard training, in the military, in police. Unless everything I have been taught has been erased from the training regimens, then I defer, but your handle gives you away.
The only thing Perry has going for him is that he's a civilian.
"police weapons generally only point at weapons not at people"
Outside of movies, no one is shooting guns out of people's hands. Police are trained to point their guns at the center of mass of the person who is a threat and to shoot at the center of mass, not at any weapon the person is carrying.
Continuum of force is definitely NOT part of military training excluding survival cases like MPs. Soldiers are not police and generally use of force behind with deadly force.
Are you completely off your rocker? I never said they aim for weapons, when weapons are present is when weapons come out, if they are already out they aren't pointed unless necessary. When pointed, lethal force had better be warranted.
And if you think that level of force continuums weren't instructed on for the regular troops commingling in the cities of the Iraq and Afghanistan, there would have been enough civilian bodies to fill the Grand Canyon added to the mounds already caused by our presence there. Have you been absent from this planet for so long you forgot that Iraq and Afghanistan were mostly occupations with direct contact with civilians?
Why am I even trying to communicate with you?
Most military folks are trained to kill, not subdue. No one knew Neely’s physical capabilities, what was in his pockets or if he had any accomplices nearby.
Sure police with able armed partners can attempt to subdue with controlled escalation but Penny was acting in a split second, and unsure how able Neely or any good samaritan bystander would be. Yes, Neely “might” have been subdued with a couple of bear hugs, but otoh Penny and helpers “might” have been cut up or shot. Lots of stories of bouncers, who thought they were just ejecting a mouthy staggering drunk, ending up badly injured or worse. Hard to prosecute that.
I don't know the fix for our mental health mess but for a country chasing crypto, record holiday travel, real estate, thousand+ dollar tickets for concerts and pro games, and $80k pickup trucks, I think we could try harder. Yeah- good luck with that after November.
The idea that a person may suddenly produce a weapon leads to deadly force in EVERY confrontation. Is that what you are implying?
Not EVERY time. But if you choose to let that struggling stranger go hoping he either won't attack or you can restrain him again, Harry Callahan has a question for you. Paul Pelosi knows the answer.
I know people that think like that, they aren't good company and are difficult to work with. No thank you. I prefer to produce my own rational OODA loop not live in a hypothetical one.
you may think the murder was justified
but one human life snuffed out another human life
... and may have saved others.
Gosh, I am so surprised you took the side of the white guy who murdered the black guy. And by that I mean you are a racist piece of shit and everyone already knew where you stand before you open your disgusting little mouth to spew racism through your rotted teeth.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
Neely was a serial assaulter of subway riders, mostly women.
Disgusting.
Then the police should have taken him into custody and not some random dude assault him. But the cops were probably too upset that they were called abusive and decided to just not make any arrests at all. Like those NJ troopers.
There's no legal mechanism for that. We don't institutionalize dangerously mentally ill people anymore. Neely had assaulted a number of people before including a 67 year old woman who suffered serious injuries. He was convicted and given a very light sentence.
NYC has lots of programs and mechanisms for getting people like Neely help, but they can't compel him to accept treatment. It was just a matter of time before he assaulted someone else, possibly killing them.
Public spaces aren't like shopping malls where the operator can get a court order and bar future entry by force if needed. There's nothing between accepting the risks of a dangerous presence and securing a conviction with a long sentence. Luckily, at least for now, sentences have to be commensurate with the crime not the potential for future crime.
"Then the police should have taken him into custody and not some random dude assault him. "
They did take him into custody. 30 minutes after called, two "armed and trained" officers arrived. But in the meantime if you're the random dude restraining Neely, are you going to ease up on him hoping either he'll calm down or that you can subdue him again?? Yes Neely wasn't waving a hammer but do you know his physical abilities or what's in his pockets??
Paul Pelosi has an opinion on that, and Harry Callahan has a question for you.
My guess is the prosecutor was "urged" to take this one to trial.
Maybe his dad should have been there for him when he was threatening people on a train instead of just being there at this guy's trial.
Easy to say but if you have ever had to deal with someone with mental illness you will understand that it is just not possible.
The person will refuse to stay with you, refuse to stay in your house, and run or use physical violence to get away from you.
Add to that that Neely's father probably had to work in order to survive. Being homeless with his son because he could not afford rent would not have improved the situation.
I just want to take a moment to note that I've finally found an area of agreement with MF! Dealing with a relative suffering from a severe mental illness is extremely difficult. Even theoretically getting them help is more difficult than it should be, but getting them to actually accept the help can sometimes be impossible. Nobody should be blaming this guy's father unless there are very specific reasons to do so.
Plus 9000+++There is a mental health competency court here in LA...I took up an urgent matter for a family seriously at risk...but the person at the date of the hearing was perfectly rational, understood their behavioral failings, etc etc, apologized at length.
The Court denied the commitment petition...they later that month set a house on fire...no one injured but there was property damage.
I emphasize the court was not at fault...these are very difficult matters.
Deinstitutionalization has been a disaster. Presume like Neely need to be involuntarily committed.
Deinstitutionalization was always intended to be accompanied by much more widespread community-based supports. The problem is that those were never established or adequately funded.
Would you have everyone who’s screaming on the street committed indefinitely? Most will respond to medication, after which there’s no justification for keeping them hospitalized - except that the supports needed to monitor compliance and provide housing, employment etc., don’t exist. No one wants a policy that discharges people into a hostile wilderness to survive without support.
I had a career of dealing with people with severe mental illness. What you just said doesn’t really make sense.
"This doesn't make any sense. It means there were at least some jurors who wanted to convict Penny on the more serious charge but quickly agreed to acquit him of the lesser charge. What's the explanation for that?"
From that paragraph, it sounds like there were one or more jurors that wanted to convict of second degree manslaughter but other jurors didn't, so the jury was deadlocked on that charged. To avoid a potential mistrial, the prosecutors dropped the more serious charge, and the jurors were left with no choice but to only consider the lesser charge. The juror who wanted 2nd deg manslaughter may be upset over that, but they don't get a say in what the prosecutor does.
"The juror who wanted 2nd deg manslaughter may be upset over that, but they don't get a say in what the prosecutor does."
If they thought the prosecution had met the bar for the more serious charge conviction that means it should also meet the conviction for the lesser charge. In other words the prosecutor dropping the charge to a lesser one to avoid a mistrial was to hopefully convince those who were thinking "Not guilty" of the serious one to convict on the lesser charge. In this case the opposite happened. Those who were thinking "Guilty" of the more serious charge, changed their mind to "Not Guilty" of the lesser one.
To me the only explanation for this is that after being locked deliberating for a week, those original "Guilty" votes rather than hold their own for longer and get the mistrial even with the lesser charges, they instead said "fuck it, I'm tired so let's declare him not guilty and go home".
"It's possible, of course, that "deadlocked" means there was one holdout who wanted to convict," Or the jury inferred from the prosecutors request to drop the more serious charge that the prosecution didn't believe in their own case.
The takeaway for me is that, even in New York City, there's residual fondness for vigilante justice and the Wild West. Same as in the claim that the solution to our outrageously high gun violence is more guns.
"The takeaway for me is that, even in New York City, there's residual fondness for vigilante justice and the Wild West. ..."
This is what tolerating fare beating leads to. People are sick of trouble makers riding for free while they have to pay.
Sad story. Good result in the end. A jury decided. I respect their verdict.
Kevin should know better than to post shit like this. It’s out of his wheelhouse - there’s no data to chart, no trend to analyze, no implications for anyone anywhere else, and no lessons learned for future policy making.
But given that Kevin apparently can’t resist clickbait and touching on racial/poverty/mental illness stories like this…
Don’t feed the fucking trolls that plague this site. They will disgustingly engage in victim blaming and hero worship, and generally welcome an all-against-all dystopian future in which everyone just murders anyone else who crosses them.
None of us were in that subway car. So none of us can truthfully say there was absolutely nothing else Daniel Penny could’ve done. (I simply move to another car when disruptive people are in my car, but Stand Your Ground types don’t like appearing to be pussies, so more violence it is I guess.)
Congrats Daniel Penny. Now live with yourself for the next 40 or whatever years knowing you killed someone and traumatized other bystanders watching you kill someone, and let God have mercy on your soul. (I personally would have trouble sleeping after killing someone with my bare hands even if they deserved it.) No outcome here was going to provide solace to anyone else, even as it provides plenty of Wild West Yeehaw grist for the trolls.
"Now live with yourself for the next 40 or whatever years knowing you killed someone and traumatized other bystanders watching you kill someone, and let God have mercy on your soul."
You think that is going to cost him sleep or cause him any sort of long term concern? My guess is he'll probably see it as a bragging point going forward.
Have stopped riding the Blue Line in Chicago due to it having far too many McNeelys. There are definitely no cops since the Chicago Progressive moron mayor hates them. If there there were less criminals/lunatics on the CTA maybe the Loop would not be so deserted. But carry on with normalizing lunatics/junkies on public transportation. And people wonder why Trump won....
We can't have decent health care for the poor, including mental health care, because Republicans keep voting against funding it. And we can't have decent housing for the poor because Republicans keep voting against funding it. So the mentally ill end up hanging out in buses and trains.
But when D's talk about this in public journalists say that they are "talking down to the voters".
Trump won because he appeals to people who don't want to think things through.
"We can't have decent health care for the poor, including mental health care, because Republicans keep voting against funding it. And we can't have decent housing for the poor because Republicans keep voting against funding it. So the mentally ill end up hanging out in buses and trains."
Not a lot of Republicans in San Francisco. So how are things going there?
I, of course, would never bother to argue with such a troll, but in case anyone is interested in what the subways of Chicago are like, here is what I've noticed. Sometimes there is a homeless guy in the same car as me. Sometimes, but not most of the time. Maybe there will be someone sleeping. Or talking to himself. Or someone in shabby clothes. I'm not really sure how often I see them because they've never attacked anyone so I don't really pay much attention.
I've seen police on various platforms. Always good to see them, but I'm hard pressed to remember how often I see them because I've never observed them breaking up a fight or whatever. So I don't pay them a lot of attention. You can tell how accurate the troll's version of events is by his "Chicago Progressive moron mayor hates" cops statement. I've heard lots of things the Mayor has said since he took office, but never once has he talked about his hatred of cops. But I can understand why someone would think that about the mayor. Before he took office he criticized the cops and as anyone who has followed the CPD can attest, Chicago Police never screw up and are just the best at their jobs. Who knows, someday they might even get over 50% closure rates on murders. Again, obviously beyond criticism.
I guess "normalizing lunatics/junkies" includes observing that I see crazy homeless guys less often than I did in the 90s or 00s. As for this troll not wanting to ride the train anymore... I recall this summer getting off the Red Line late at night and passing two teenage girls. They looked like they weighed about 100 lbs a piece, but I have no doubt there was more to them than it seemed. They must have been masters of concealment because to walk around the mean streets of Chicago they needed to be heavily armed, but, even though they weren't wearing very much, I didn't observe a single weapon on their persons. OK, but I'm sure they were trained in street fighting. Probably experts in the deadly arts of "jiu - I'm not scared of my own shadow - jitsu."
Too few people know how to handle folks who are having mental health "issues." For that matter, maybe too many people immediately leap to the "violence" solutions for problems in general. It certainly seems as if this is the case for too many police officers.
Seems as if this could be a teachable moment.
It absolutely should be a teachable moment. But I am willing to bet it won't be.
Most of y'all are looking back with perfect foreknowledge of who the guy was and what he would do. If I or my family were stuck in a sealed metal box with an individual yelling death threats and suicide indifference who moved towards a child I hope that I too will have someone there capable of stopping him in time. And if he gets hurt or killed in the 6 minute process that is absolutely a tragedy and nowhere near a crime. The marine was a hero in my books, immediately sought help from law enforcement, struggled with difficulty to maintain control until they arrived, and the incident could have ended very differently for both the marine and for any of the other people inside the train. That is exemplified by the fact, unknown at the time of the events, this particular individual had already previously attacked members of the public on several occasions. Several of the people in the train car were in fear for their lives; self defense and defense of others allows you to use extreme force to stop him. His dad might think he was harmless, but his criminal history disagrees, and nobody in that train car had any way to know how dangerous he could get.
Exactly! There were other people in that subway car.
With respect to Drum's question: the two charges were alternative incompatible theories. The lesser offense was NOT included in the greater one in the usual sense that anyone who commits the greater one has automatically met the bar for the lesser one. In fact it is impossible to commit both. So there is no logical contradiction in this behavior.
The difference is in the mens rea requirement. Manslaughter requires recklessness, awareness one is creating a risk. Negligent homicide in New York requires criminal negligence, defined as failure to perceive a risk that a reasonable person would have been aware of.
So some jurors were ready to convict on manslaughter, finding him reckless. But once that was dropped they agreed he did not behave criminal negligence. To them his crime was manslaughter or nothing and once that was taken away from them, they agreed he didn't commit the (distinct) lesser offense.