Daniel Penny found NOT GUILTY
I have to say this verdict surprises me, and I’m happy about it. I thought the best Penny could possibly hope for would be that the jury would hang on the second count as well. Instead, they acquitted him. So now he’ll be a free man – although he may have to go into some equivalent of the witness protection program.
Then again, a great many people are on his side. And many of them even live in New York City.
I repeat: I’m surprised.
My hunch on what may have happened is that this: We only knew the jury was deadlocked on the first and most serious count. We never know whether the majority leaned towards acquitting him or convicting him. Now it seems fairly clear that that there were probably only one or two jurors willing to vote Penny guilty on that first count. Then the judge gave an Allen warning – basically, that the state had spent a lot of time and money on the case and the jurors really needed to go back and reach a unanimous verdict – but the holdout or holdouts remained.
They may have thought that would be the end of the case, based on the judge’s earlier instructions. But no, they were sent back to deliberate on the second count – the lesser one. At that point, the holdout or holdouts may have decided that enough was enough, and voted with the majority for acquittal rather than spend a lot of time and effort only to be deadlocked again. And they voted not guilty rather quickly, at that.
I believe that justice has prevailed here. But the case never should have been brought.
Hard to square the not guilty verdict on the lesser charge with the deadlock on the manslaughter charge. I think Neo is likely correct- the holdouts gave up after the rest of the jury refused to convict on the lesser charge, too.
This never should have seen the inside of a courtroom. True justice would see the prosecutor ousted.
As I said in the open thread, I’m glad and relieved.
No doubt Jordan Neely’s family will be going after Penny civily for a payout, the same family that washed their hands of Neely years ago due to him being a dangerous, schizo addict with a long, violent history. I have no idea how that’ll turn out. Plus he could be targeted for some street level retribution.
Needless to say, Penny should get out of NYC and move to a more sane locale.
Justice prevailed in the end, but you’re right that the charges should never have been brought. So it is still a perversion of justice to a certain extent.
Penny’s entire life was upended, and he still faces a civil lawsuit; and plenty of harassment in real life and on social media for an indefinite period of time.
Until woke prosecutors face personal consequences for these ridiculous trials, until race baiting hucksters like Al Sharpton and Ben Crump find their livelihoods personally threatened, until individual ‘journalists’ face defamation lawsuits forcing them into personal bankruptcy, until the endless army of woke keyboard warriors and ‘rent-a-mob’ protesters are exposed, doxxed and threatened with ‘cancelation’ themselves and…perhaps most importantly…until the shadowy financers of leftist groups are exposed and subject to RICO prosecution….there will be many more Daniel Penney type trials.
Don’t hold your breath on any of the above.
X posts say activists are threatening vigilante attacks on Penny, or on whites in general. Several protesters outside the courthouse have been arrested — not that anything will happen to them.
I assume there is some provision forbidding the citizenry from suing judges and DAs for malpractice. If not, it should be done. A lot.
But I doubt the shysters would fail to protect themselves.
I just made a donation to his law firm, Raiser & Kenniff, P.C., via this GiveSendGo: https://www.givesendgo.com/daniel_penny Looks like they’ve already raised quite a large fund, $3.2MM or so, but I’m grateful to them for a good job.
He was acquitted, but the lesson stands; do not attempt to help when a perp is one of the Anointed.
I have to say this verdict surprises me, and I’m happy about it.
–neo
I wonder how much difference Trump’s big victory might have made. It seems to me the Zeitgeist has shifted. I’m sure breathing a lot easier..
As I recall, in other pivotal political cases juries may have felt intimidated to acquit defendants on the “wrong side” of woke.
_____________________________
Anonymous jury in Derek Chauvin trial part of a growing trend that has some legal experts worried
Given the blazing spotlight on the trial, Judge Peter Cahill decided it was best to keep the names of the potential jurors unknown.
“Strong reasons exist to believe that threats to jurors’ safety and impartiality exist,” Cahill wrote in his decision last fall.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/04/25/chauvin-trial-jury-anonymous-concerning-trend-us-justice/7342909002/
_____________________________
One is only anonymous until doxxed and the left loves to dox.
The Organization being tried for massive pandemic fraud in Minneapolis tracked a juror to her home and offered a massive cash bribe.
Striking how the lib Left wishes vicious harm on middle-of-the road Americans.
I guess this is part of the classic tactic Stalinists employ to seize power and rule.
Penny (white) was clearly innocent. Neely the druggie was black, criminal, and likely schizophrenic, not responsive to reason. Blacks are not the cream of the American crop, but are being pushed upon us. I mean, see commercial TV ads, full of nice black families, so middle class. Then see the FBI data on violent crimes by race.
Why have whites become so oppressed, without fighting back?
It sickens me that these BLM racists can stand outside the courthouse and threaten Penny. The DA seems to care little about stopping the racist mob from threatening him and other whites.
I also understand there were anonymous threats made against Penny’s lawyers and the prosecutors. I assume the jurors were threatened as well.
What a can of worms. Thankfully, the jury was courageous enough to ignore the mob. Still, it’s a justice system being driven by racism. NYC is a cesspool.
Neely reacted like a warrior (think Hegseth), what’s left of the NYPD thought he was too icky to touch… The warrior cops have most likely retired or gone elsewhere.
Cicero:
There are a great many more nice middle class law-abiding black people than there are black criminals. Black people are over-represented among criminals, but the great majority of black people are law-abiding.
So much good news in the last month!
The race grifters have no shame.
Neo-
Blacks are not “over-represented among criminals”. They are much more often violent felons, including murders, than any of our other ethnics. See FBI data, easily available. It is as simple as that!
Cicero:
That’s what “over-represented among criminals” refers to. My main point is that despite that over-representation, most black people are neither criminals nor violent criminals.
@neo:most black people are neither criminals nor violent criminals.
Few black women, young children, or elderly (currently, as opposed to in their youth) criminals, of course. The proportion of black men aged 15-45 is where the crime and especially violent crime are concentrated, and our government has refused to collect reliable statistics on this for some years now, but University of Georgia estimates that
Mind you this is just felony convictions and not all crime, and we’re up to 33% of African-American males. Accepting for the sake of argument that estimate is accurate, and that we could actually know the demographic statistics for all crime and not just felonies, how willing are we to bet that criminals are still a minority of black males? It could certainly not be a tiny minority, since considering only felons gets us to 1/3 with almost 1/6 having been incarcerated.
@ JJ: It sickens me that these BLM racists can stand outside the courthouse and threaten Penny.
Those gentlemen and ladies of BLM have been cheered, encouraged and coddled by our ‘news’ media and our ‘intellectuals’ for decades, to believe that they, the ‘oppressed’, are morally superior to those of a lighter hue, and that their lynch-mob behavior is ‘justice’. They’re performing just like trained doggies, growling for the camera.
Take a look at today’s Instapundit, on preference cascades. This is another example. Such cascades can collapse on short notice, and this example is at the head of the line, when the journalists wake up.