penny walks free
win one for the good guys
penny walks.
somehow, a jury that was hung on manslaughter voted “not guilty” unanimously on criminally negligent homicide.
i find this puzzling as it means that someone (likely only 1 or 2 someones) switched from saying “guilty” on 2nd degree manslaughter (also known as “involuntary manslaughter” where you did not mean to kill someone but did to “not guilty” on CNH where negligent action resulted in death.
CNH reads like this.
the only real legalistic pivot is “did penny know his actions could/were likely to cause death?”
so it seems like one of three things happened:
either this was someone on the jury saying “he knew this had risks so it’s not CNH” which seems odd as such a person would need to be a VERY strict legalist and would be letting someone they thought knew he was likely to kill someone and did walk on this technicality. i rate this lowest probability.
the folks who voted to convict on MS2 realized this was just going to deadlock again and flipped to just get out of there as they were just exhausted and wanted no more. seems possible.
or maybe, just maybe, the jury had had it with the prosecutor, the judge, this system, and the scummy play to drop MS2 to be able to try for a lesser charge and did not want to support such dirtball tactics. i kind of hope that’s what occurred. it would speak well for the future.
whatever the case, this is a serious black eye for dafna. she got creamed both legally and publicly. good. i hope she enjoys her retirement.
it’s nice to see that self-defense is still legal in NYC. perhaps this will dissuade the next round of “process as punishment” railroading.
if we want to help end this, there are two simple things to support:
castle doctrine.
stand your ground laws.
castle doctrine means your home is your castle. (your car too as an extension) you need no pretext to defend it. someone breaks in, the fault becomes theirs. this law places the burden of due care upon intruders, not on those they threaten. it’s just, fair, reasonable, finds strong consonance with longstanding common law and practice, and it works. places that remove it see home invasions spike.
stand your ground means if some one comes at you, you need not move. you can stay where you are and defend the patch upon which you stand. NY does not have this law. they have a “duty to retreat” in the face of an aggressor. minnesota also imposes such a duty and has shoit down several attempts to change it, a stunning choice after the riots they had. their supreme court upheld it.
quite literally, i can pull a knife on you and even if you are armed you cannot draw your weapon if it’s possible that you can flee.
this is a gross abrogation of natural law.
with both castle doctrine and stand your ground in place, there is legal latitude for self-defense. without them, it’s license for aggressors to aggress without price. they pull a knife, you must run, you cannot fight back unless cornered. that’s a BAD incentive set, especially with these social justice DA’s and jurists.
the remedy for this and the genius of our system lies in juries. juries do NOT have to follow the law. they do not have to explain their choices. they can just say “no.” jury nullification is a very powerful tool to keep the nature of a society within the society itself.
and jury duty matters. one day you might be in front of one. do you want it to be “12 people who could not get out of jury duty” or 12 people that might actually be peers?
we really ought to all start taking this seriously. try to get on juries. try to hand out justice. if we leave them to radicals and reprobates, guess what kind of outcomes we get?
yeah.
and it could be the opposite. if juries were full of the people generally too busy to be on juries, then juries would send people like dafna and alvin “the menace” bragg packing.
this is the place you can directly push back.
it’s not a duty you want to shirk.
it’s one you want to take on.
it’s a place to make a difference and a place where difference is needed.
worth thinking about…
somehow, a jury that was hung on manslaughter voted “not guilty” unanimously on criminally negligent homicide.
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Maybe the jury took my advice and rode the subway all weekend.
This is indeed great news. Penny stomped out a loser who was acting out dangerously on the subway. While we can lament the loss of life, he defended people. At least that's my current view. On the folks screaming "white supremacy" while having done NOTHING about him being homeless in the first place, nothing is quite as transparent as their bullshit.
As a personal aside, I was amazed at the behavior of the jury on which I served. They were just as unwilling to be pawns of the system as was I. I'd like to think that's what happened here. (Edit: Serving on a jury was one of my personal highlights. If you care about justice, serving on a jury and getting the chance to influence it is the closest you may come to actually playing a direct part. Do NOT get out of jury duty. Embrace it!)