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Notes -
Daniel Penny Acquitted
Last Friday after several days of deadlocked deliberations, the judge agreed to the prosecutor's request to drop the most serious charge of manslaughter, and asked the jury to consider the lesser charge of negligent homicide. It's strange that the jury was so quickly able to dismiss this charge while spending multiple days debating the more serious one.
This case was pretty controversial but judging by the political temperature I don't forecast any major protests or riots.
It was a nice case of jury nullification, which of course it a nice tool to counteract the absurd practice of piling charges that is perverting the justice system.
The real criminal is the MTA - they chose to make the subway and the public transit unsecure. If they had put the safety and comfort of the passengers, if there were people to respond there wouldn't have had a need for vigilantism.
I think that Daniel Penny contributed substantially to the death, but we can't be put in a situation in which to evaluate how crazy a crazy is before the bystanders have to intervene. A stabbing could take a tenth of a second.
I think this is the right decision for the charges that were brought.
Also what is the idiocy of the American justice system that allows civil law suits for criminal matters? Talking about the one filed by his father (also - if you have a father, how the fuck are you homeless, i would really like to hear said father on the stand about the relationship with his son)
I dont see how this is a case of jury nullification. From a reading of the medical records, its pretty hard to see that the state even carried its burden of proof on the most basic of questions: That but-for Penny's actions, Neely would still have been alive at the end of the encounter. That is even before the prosecution's difficult case in proving criminal recklessness and/or negligence given the chaotic situation and that the actual witnesses on the scene were pretty evenly split.
He was alive at the end of the encounter. He was pronounced dead in the hospital.
I called it nullification because the trial always hanged on if the jury would see him as good Samaritan or reckless vigilante. Not on the facts.
Assume that surfaced a lot of posts of him being storm front member or racist or whatever - do you think he would still have been acquitted?
That's less jury nullification and more just how juries work. A NY jury is going to convict a white supremacist of murder of he's credibly accused of eating at Katz's while a patron nearby chokes on pastrami.
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