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Notes -
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/12/us/jordan-neely-daniel-penny-new-york-subway-death-charge/index.html
Daniel Penny, a 24-year old Marine, turned himself to police after being charged with 2nd degree manslaughter for the killing of Jordan Neely. It looks like I was initially wrong. I said that drugs may have played a role given that the original NYTs story, which I replied to, from a week ago said that Neely had been choked for only 2-3 minutes and released and was unresponsive. The updated story is that he was choked out for much longer, as long as 15 minutes, which would have def. been lethal, and the video is pretty bad.
So retract my original argument in which I posit drugs played a role. This is why you should always wait until you have all the information before forming an opinion. I didn't think the story would blow up like it did. I just assumed it was some random altercation. The video is why it went so viral. I think Penny is not without some guilt here. Keeping someone in a choke for so long is going to end in death. It's likely Neely was not rendered unconscious near-instantly from blood loss to the brain, such as from a sleeper hold as I assumed from the original story (I assumed Penny put Neely in a hold, and then Neely went limp in 20-30 seconds and did not come back), but far worse, had been suffocated to death, like being held underwater because his windpipe was restricted. That's why he was flailing around. It would have been more humane had Penny just shot him although that would have carried a worse charge.
A second degree manslaughter conviction is not that bad. only max 15 years for killing someone, and with parole Penny may only spend 5 years, which is a pretty lenient sentence for killing a guy, and not even in self defense or accident. By comparison, Ross Ulbricht faces multiple life sentences despite not killing anyone. I cannot say Penny is not without some blame in this matter. But In Penny's defense, the police took too long to come, and despite Marine training he and his accomplices didn't know what else to do.
I'm going to throw out a theory, which is wild speculation but I feel the need to include because it strikes me as obvious.
The fifteen minutes duration increases the odds that this is drug related. Daniel Penny almost certainly did not intend to murder Neely, from the video Neely is still struggling minutes into being choked. Instead it seems likely that Penny attempted to choke Neely unconscious so as to avoid violence, failed to properly execute the maneuver, and instead had Neely in a restricted breathe restraint for several minutes. You can tell because the hold should knock out anyone, if properly applied, within seconds; Neely continued to struggle against three men holding him down for minutes. If Neely had stopped struggling, even if Penny wanted to kill him, it seems unlikely that the other two strangers would have continued to restrain him. Under the stress of the incident, combined with likely drugs or other underlying issues and the restricted breathe, Neely had some kind of heart attack etc.
Penny was not intentionally setting out to kill Neely, instead he was negligent in applying a less-than-lethal restraint and Neely died as a result. So the legal (and moral) question becomes twofold: Was Penny entitled to use less-than-lethal restraints against Neely? And was Penny Negligent or Reckless in how he applied those restraints?
Unfortunately, every detail of this will end up in the public sphere. A few points I am very curious to see:
-- How much did Neely actually know about applying a Rear Naked Choke to a resisting opponent? Was he an active BJJ enthusiast? Was this something he learned briefly ten years ago but never really used? Or perhaps he had never received actual training, but watched MMA videos on youtube sometimes and though it looked easy enough? If he was a purple belt, it increases the probability he intentionally killed Neely because negligence is less likely; but it also makes his choice to try seem more appropriate, because it is something he knew how to do. If he saw it once on Youtube and thought he could pull it off irl, it makes negligence more likely, but also makes the decision to try it seem more reckless.
-- How long, exactly, was Neely struggling for? When did he cease to struggle? How long after he ceased to struggle was the hold released?
-- Unfortunately for Penny, if he is like 90%+ of people his age, his diary that he places in the hands of third party corporations that will hand it over at the first problem is going to come into this. As Hoffmeister noted in his post on the topic, if Penny has posts like many on here indicating that he thinks the homeless are subhuman scum that need to be cleared off the streets, we will know soon. This is quite likely where the story will hinge. Prosecution will aim to portray him as "looking for a fight" and looking for an excuse to hurt or kill someone.
-- The prosecution was smart to charge him with a lower homicide felony rather than Murder 1, that's why Rittenhouse got off. While I think Rittenhouse was more or less entirely justified in what he did, he probably could have been convicted of negligent manslaughter on the theory that he made some procedural mistake in going somewhere he shouldn't have, but he was never going to get convicted of premeditated murder. Penny's case will push the idea that he responded appropriately to what Neely did/said, and that he never intended to kill him, but other causes (drugs) lead to Neely's death.
-- Whether Neely was a capital A Addict I have no idea, but if they don't find signs of drug use in his system, I'll be shocked.
-- The various Death Wish style masturbatory fantasies that are floating around the internet are totally inappropriate to what happened. This has nothing to do with whether homeless people ought to be murdered, because that was not what anyone intended to do. It has to do with whether one has the right to use reasonable less-than-lethal force to protect oneself and others, and remain protected if the egg-shell-victim happens to die.
Stuff like this generally isn't admissable as evidence (it wasn't in the Rittenhouse case, for instance). The fact is that idle words made weeks or months in advance are not the same as intent or premeditation.
While true, these cases are also tried in the media. My parents, with their steady diet of CNN and MSNBC, were sad when Rittenhouse got off because he they thought he was a "white supremacist" who shot people in cold blood.
It's tough to find a jury that is insulated from the news media, and people can also lie to get on a jury.
If the media tars Neely as motivated by hate, he will have a tough time getting a fair trial regardless of what happens in the courtroom.
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