Reward
That’s nice. Invite a guy who killed a homeless person to the game. How very trumpvance.
A New York City subway rider who was acquitted this week of killing a homeless man during a confrontation on a train has joined US President-elect Donald Trump as a guest of honour at a popular American sporting event.
Daniel Penny, who became a conservative cause celebre, was pictured attending the Army v Navy American football game near Washington DC with Trump and Vice-President-elect JD Vance.
…
A jury cleared Mr Penny of criminally negligent homicide on Monday for using a fatal chokehold to restrain Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, who had been shouting at other passengers and asking for money, last year.
So Trump decided to reward him for killing the homeless man.
Listen up. Shouting at people on public transportation (or pretty much anywhere) is crap behavior. There’s a lot of crap behavior on the buses in Seattle, because there are a lot of people ruined by fentanyl in Seattle, and that’s a bad thing. It is not, however, such a bad thing that it warrants killing people engaging in the bad behavior. Stopping the bus and telling them to get out, yes. Calling the cops if they won’t get out, maybe. Killing them, no.
Next point. Conspicuously rewarding people for killing a homeless person is not a good thing to do. It is, in fact, a vile, ugly, stomach-turning thing to do.
Speaking about Mr Penny’s acquittal earlier this week, Vance said this week on X that Mr Penny was “a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone”.
No, not for having a backbone. For killing someone. Note that Mr Penny ruined a guy’s life: the guy whose life he ended by choking him.
If Mr Homeless had been assaulting a passenger, it would be another story. But unless the reporting here is totally dishonest, he wasn’t. You don’t get to assault people just for shouting.
The incoming vice-president added that it was “a scandal” that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg ever prosecuted the case.
Why? Is it really a virtuous act to kill a homeless guy because he is shouting at people on a bus? There are steps between “do nothing” and “chokehold.”
We’re in for a horrible four years.
“We’re in for a horrible four years.”
The moral of this debacle: Punch down. Punch down, hard.
But it wasn’t “just shouting”. From the wiki page on the incident:
“… witnesses said that Neely made “half-lunge movements” at other passengers and was within “half a foot of people”, and recalled fearing for their lives. A mother with a child testified that Neely charged at passengers, and she shielded herself and her child behind a stroller, believing she might die …”
“Another witness heard Neely say, “Someone is going to die today.”” and he’s also reported as saying “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die”, while “defense attorneys quoted a witness stating that she had been riding the subway for years but had never encountered a person who “put fear into” her as much as Neely did.”
Further, two others passengers joined Penny in physically restraining Neely. Thus at least two others (in addition to Penny) judged that physical restraint was appropriate.
But that’s not what he was rewarded for. The defence case (which the jury seem to have accepted) included: “Defense attorneys stated that Penny initially ignored Neely, but acted after he saw Neely approach the mother and son hiding behind a stroller while saying “I will kill.””
As they see it, they were rewarding his willingness to go to the aid of other passengers, including that mother and her young son, who were (literally, as she testified) in fear of their lives.
Also, the reward is a way of signalling disagreement with the decision to prosecute Penny.
They did indeed call the cops: “Vázquez said that Penny asked other riders to call the police …” and “When the train reached Broadway–Lafayette Street station, riders prevented the train from moving onward by holding open the train doors, waiting for police to come …”
Yes, there are steps between those, but it’s really not that easy if a 30-yr-old adult male is putting up a struggle: “Neely struggled against the chokehold by kicking and trying to free his arms, which were being pinned by two other men. A witness said that it did not look like Penny had control of the situation due to the struggle …”. And bear in mind that anything less than a chokehold and pinned arms could have easily (for all they knew) resulted in Neely pulling a knife or gun.
Would we really prefer that, in such situations, Penny and the two other men had just ignored the plight of the mother with her young son? If something in between, then what exactly?
Anyhow, multiple witnesses in that subcar testified on behalf of Penny and supported his actions, and the jury considered all of their accounts and decided that Penny’s actions were appropriate in the circumstances.
The Trump Administration sounds like they took the lyrics of the Dead Kennedys’ satirical “Kill the Poor” completely seriously:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldH9EyOf7Xk
Coel – That’s why I said “But unless the reporting here is totally dishonest.”
The lesser charge was entirely appropriate; I really don’t understand how you go from a hung jury on a greater charge to acquittal on a lesser one. The suggestion I’ve heard is that the jury just wanted to give the prosecutor the finger because of overcharging, but how is that a way to behave in adjudication of a trial. I’ve got no problem with the idea that Penny just took it a bit too far in the heat of the moment and being fairly lenient in sentencing but if you kill someone you need to face state sanction for it. Vigilantism isn’t acceptable behavior.
Identity characteristics matter here too; if it had been a “heroic” homeless man killing a mentally ill ex-Marine the “Fox and Friends” crowd would be baying for blood and if Neely had been white we may well not have heard if the case.
That’s the clear linkage with the UHC assassination: as a society killing surplus people is valorized if they’re the right sort of victim, be they CEO of an unpopular industry or a threatening mentally ill homeless man.
And Wikipedia is the most honest, truthful, and reliable news source in both the known and unknown worlds.
Furthermore, there is nothing magical about a Jury. Juries can, and often do, deliver the wrong verdict through ignorance, bias, and in today’s USA, it seems, according to political affiliation. That this case has both a death and an identified cause of death hints to me that there were elements of bias against the homeless and towards the “lone hero myth” that permeates USA society.
Coel, none of your fine words justify the killing. Not one. If a person is capable of instituting a choke hold, they are also capable of other measures of restraint. Penny chose to not use other options, Penny chose to continue the hold until a man died.
As the greatest character in fiction said “By their fruits ye shall know them”, and we know that yours are the bitter and rancid fruits of the fetid swamp, you are a card carrying deplorable, and someone who is always willing to take the side of the vilest in humanity.
Physical restraint, yes, no problem there. Killing? Big difference, and the footage that made the rounds back then and now afresh makes clear that the other two had no part of the continued strangulation.
Putting a blood choke (where you’re stopping the blood from going through the neck arteries rather than constricting airflow) on someone will typically knock them out in 10-15 seconds.
If Penny kept the choke on for 15, 6, or 5 minutes (accounts vary), this is wildly irresponsible and would certainly kill Neely.
Penny said he switched from choking to restraining. That’s not unreasonable. You can hold them across the neck without putting pressure on but be able to immediately start doing if they wake up and resume struggling.
Except the video I’ve seen makes it look like he’s got the blood choke cranked on the whole time. People said he seemed to be in a trance almost. But it is hard to tell. Maybe he thought he’d loosened it just enough and he was just being very alert to the need to reapply it.
I don’t think he intended to kill Neely. I think he just wanted to protect people from a maniac and would have preferred the police cart off the very-much-alive Neely at the end of the incident.
But he messed up and killed Neely. It would be a very difficult call for me. On the one hand, he ended up killing someone. On the other hand, Neely seemed very likely to harm people, and it can be a fine line between not going overboard and letting the person get away and start fighting you.
I don’t know which way I would have gone. But ill say people are unbelievably sick of this kind of thing, so I’m not surprised a jury was like, f it, we’ll err on the side of the guy stopping the maniac.
Ug, got “if” and “of” mixed up on #5 (twice even, though different each time).
I think I fixed it seconds before you posted this.
It is true, as Skeletor says, that people are very sick of this kind of thing. As I mentioned in the post, I see some of it myself, because I use the city buses a lot. People flip out, abuse the driver, throw things, slam things on the ground, yell, etc. It’s unpleasant as hell, and occasionally scary.
I say people but I suppose I should have said men. Women do the fentanyl fold, but I don’t think I’ve seen any going violent. Mouthy, yes, but violent, no.
Rev David Brindley @6
Wikipedia cites sources for these witness descriptions of the incident, from such notorious right-wing sources as The New York Times. /s
I think people being sick of this feeds into the whole narrative. Seemingly nothing is done about people like Neely to keep them from harming others. He was a public menace:
His last unprovoked subway assault on a woman:
Why is this guy not in prison for at least 10 years after just doing that?
People saw it as when finally someone stood up to Neely when the system never did, they went after that person. This made Penny seem like a martyr in their eyes. So a hero and a martyr!
I think this is nuts. Penny would have been a hero if he’d restrained him and turned him over to the cops. But he messed up and killed him. That kind of cancels his hero status, and it’s no surprise when you get charged after choking someone to death, so he’s no martyr either. But people are mad and so rushing to embrace him.
Oh, and, Rev?
Neely was alive when the police arrived.
Ugh. The punching the woman in the face item.
I’m surprised that didn’t cause Trump to admire him instead of rejoicing at his death.
Agreed Skeletor; he was a known problem and should never been allowed out without supervision. We just don’t have enough prisons or institutions to house them in and the public is unwilling to pay for them. It’s all low priority infrastructure in a country that doesn’t prioritize much of *any* infrastructure. We also don’t really have enough housing for the non-loonies (for a number of different reasons). When lawless or erratic behavior is met with lawless correction ( negligent homicide) then the lawless correction wins.
Neely was clearly mentally ill. He needed to be in institutional care (not prison). But the right and the left, each for their own reasons, decided decades ago that wasn’t appropriate. So we have mentally ill people literally howling in the night. I hear them were I live.
@Skeletor:
Presuming that that’s not a rhetorical question, one of the major reasons is the notion of “racial justice”, which left-leaning DAs (and nearly all of academia) interpret as meaning that the fraction of the incarcerated from a given racial group should be in line with that group’s fraction of the overall population, rather than in line with the fraction of crime that they commit.
This is difficult in the US where (for example) one demographic that adds up to 13% of the population commits 55% of the homicides. Squaring that circle requires left-leaning DAs to do everything they can to downrate charges and avoid imprisoning that demographic.
So, after the unprovoked assault on the 67-yr-old woman that left her with a broken nose and broken orbital bone, Neely was given a plea-deal involving “a 15-month alternative-to-incarceration program” such that “he was supposed to stay in a treatment facility and abstain from drugs.”
After a week he walked out. Nothing was done. A warrant for his arrest was issued, but why would the police bother acting on it when the DA is just going to release him again?
Francis Boyle is right, Neely needed mental-health care. But he had a long history of not cooperating voluntarily mental-health care, so it would have to have been commital to an involuntary mental institution.
As Francis Boyle also says, Western societies don’t really do that any more. One stumbling block would again be “racial justice”, since the same problem of some racial groups being overrepresented would recur. And, given the prospect of physical assaults on the staff, such an institution would be pretty much akin to a prison anyhow.
@The Thread:
Those suggesting half-measures such that Penny and the other two restrained Neely, but without him dying, have likely not done anything such themselves and are likely underestimating the difficulty.
About two decades ago I had occasion, with one other adult, to restrain a 14-yr-old boy who was attacking another teenager. A 14-yr-old male, pumped full of anger, testosterone and adrenaline, can put up one heck of a struggle against two male adults. Had he been 19 rather than 14 we couldn’t have subdued him.
Based on that memory, and since Neely continued to struggle until he lost consciousness, I’m not going to fault Penny and would (were I a juror) also have voted for acquital.
Indeed, there is an awful lot of armchair generaling and Monday morning quarterbacking going on, not just in this thread but all over, almost all of it from people who have never been placed in mortal peril by another human being and who have no training in self-defense. I freely admit that I have relatively little experience with such peril, and have thus far only had the merest physical training, though I have read fairly extensively on the philosophy of self-defense and had discussions with people who’ve trained much more thoroughly than I have.
The first duty in any altercation where you believe your life or health to be in jeopardy is to retreat and escape. Running should always be your first resort, if it is at all possible to flee.
Failing that, the second duty is to de-escalate, to use any means of rhetoric and persuasion, or simple compliance (e.g., giving up your money or valuables without resistance to a mugger) to convince your assailant to back off or otherwise leave you in peace.
Failing that, the third duty is to intimidate your assailant; to present them with a counter-threat such that, if they are rational, they will think twice before pursuing an attack. This can include brandishing a weapon (with the caveat that you should never, ever, EVER draw a weapon you are not prepared to use), confidently squaring off against the assailant, or screaming and making a racket to intimidate them and hopefully draw some attention from passersby (though in crowded cities almost everyone ignores such rackets).
Failing that, however, your last duty is to survive a physical altercation with someone who is intent to do you harm. This generally means you have to subdue the assailant with overwhelming, sudden, decisive force. Most real physical fights are decided in seconds and by centimetres, with one wrong move dooming one of the participants to defeat.
In a real physical altercation, one can run through this four-part checklist in a fraction of a second. And if you are not being directly threatened yourself but are instead acting on behalf of others, people weaker and more vulnerable than you, retreat and flight become much more complicated still.
Life is not a video game; there are no do-overs, no power rankings or levels, no way to tell with certainty how strong or trained or be-weaponed an assailant is until it is quite probably too late and you wind up with a shank in your gut or a bullet in your skull. There are many martial arts such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or Aikido which emphasise non-lethal detention of an assailant, but these arts require years of dedicated training to confidently employ.
Neely’s death is a tragedy, as was his life, and Penny is certainly no comic-book superhero. The fact that he is being fêted by the MAGA crowd, who are just using the both of them as cultur-war pawns, is moderately disgusting — Penny is himself just as much a victim of circumstance as was Neely, and I doubt he relishes or revels in having taken a human life…or, at least, I like to think he doesn’t.
Nevertheless, given a sober account of the facts of this case (not unlike a sober account of the facts of the Rittenhouse case a few years back), there is no other conclusion than that Penny acted in a legally (and morally) defensible manner when he intervened in an altercation between a raving lunatic and a terrified mother and child, and the death of the assailant was a tragic contingency of the altercation. It should not have happened, but the chain of causation and culpability stretches a long way back and does not deserve to fall squarely on Penny’s shoulders. Yes, Penny and his fellow intervening passengers might have been able to subdue Neely without killing him, but it is also quite possible that if any of them had relented, at least one of them could be dead. Nobody asked for this tragedy, not even really Neely — or at least, not a Neely who hadn’t been ravaged by homelessness and drugs and despair.
Both Penny and Neely are symptoms of a diseased society which is obviously mouldering from the inside, where technocrats craft algorithms into the future whilst living hand-to-mouth in shoebox apartments that should’ve been condemned decades ago, and walk through streets and ride on trains and buses evermore crowded with the cast-offs of this brave new world.
Yes, people are starting to get sick of mentally-ill homeless people turning their commutes and their recreation into harrowing affairs. They are sick of economists and politicians telling them they live in the best, richest, freest, most democratic societies the world has ever known even as the ostensible governing bodies of those societies seek to impoverish and perhaps even imprison their citizens if they dare to claim otherwise. They are sick of having to pay forty percent of their take-home pay on rent for a squalid tenement in neighbourhoods constantly reeking of human urine, where the likelihood of getting accosted or assaulted by a deranged drug-addict only seems to be going up, and where nobody seems to have any idea how to make any of it better but by God they’ll call you a fascist if you point out that this state of affairs is unacceptable.
Most of these people still consider themselves quite progressive, at least for now, and most of them probably hate Penny and Trump (and Rittenhouse and Musk and Rogan and all the other progresive bug-bears, past and present). But people can only take so much cognitive dissonance, and society can only take so much shrugging disdain for the very concept of order or the rule of law or the social contract. Eventually even these direct victims of the rot of modernity will not be able to square their ideology with the reality they must wade through on a daily basis, and they will demand that something be done.
We had better hope that liberalism can do that something, because we do not want to see what the other guys have in mind.
Maybe I’m armchair quarterbacking, but I once restrained a man who had attacked, knocked out, and bloodied another man, and he was continuing to pummel him. I grabbed him around the neck and pulled him back, thinking I might have to choke him, and worried he might be able to spin around and attack me before I could.
Luckily, he was insanely focused on his victim and just kept maniacally pulling forward as I held him back. It was crazy. Some people dragged the bloody victim away, and some friends of the attacker got in middle and got the him somewhat settled down. He then yelled a few things at the victim and stomped off. He never acknowledged me or even looked at me.
I gave a statement to the police and was then contacted by the local prosecutor. He told me this guy had been on their radar for a while but had previously beaten up people who had been too scared to testify against him. This latest victim was ready to testify, and with me also testifying after witnessing it, he felt they had an open and shut case. I was all ready to go in the day of the trial, and then the prosecutor called me and said the guy saw the writing on the wall and had changed his plea to guilty. He went to jail. He also had to pay for his victim to get plastic surgery to fix his face.
I think Penny could have choked Neely out then relaxed his grip, and the 3 guys could have held him. They could have tied up his hands. They could have recruited more people to help hold him.
You can’t have a blood choke on someone for (to use the shortest estimate) 5 minutes and expect them to not get killed or brain damaged.
As for him still breathing, maybe he was brain damaged but still alive and didn’t make it much longer. Who knows. Surely it’s implausible to think he was unharmed then died of unrelated causes very shortly later. George Floyd had lethal doses of drugs in his system, so it’s possible he would have keeled over even if he’d never encountered the police. I believe Neely had some synthetic THC in his system, so nothing like that.
Penny says he did relax the choke. Maybe. I can appreciate being nervous to do that. Maybe he held on longer than he thought, and it ended up being too long. It’s a tragic situation.
And the people there should have intervened. They tried a bit but then backed down. They should have been more forceful. “He’s out. Good job. Let go. We’ve got him.” Pull the choke off. Penny had adrenaline surging and probably lost track of things, so cooler heads needed to intervene.
Well said. If that’s armchair quarterbacking then we need more armchair quarterbacking.
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