Legal Shenanigans Backfire: A Jury Sends a Message to the Penny Prosecutor

by el gato malo

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 one or two individuals) switched from saying “guilty” on second-degree manslaughter (also known as “involuntary manslaughter,” where you did not mean to kill someone but did) to “not guilty” on criminally negligent homicide, where negligent action resulted in death.

Criminally negligent homicide (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:

1. 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 walk on this technicality. I rate this the lowest probability.
2. 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 simply exhausted and wanted no more. This seems possible.
3. Or maybe, just maybe, the jury had had it with the prosecutor, the judge, the system, and the scummy play to drop MS2 to be able to try for a lesser charge, and they 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:

1. Castle Doctrine
2. 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. If 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 someone 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 shot 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 a 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 DAs 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?

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