It started with a headlock, then it went to a deadlock.  That is, a deadlocked jury, which could have led to a  mistrial for the case of Daniel Penny, accused of manslaughter against a violent Michael Jackson impersonator, Jordan Neely, on the NYC subway last year.

But then Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed the second-degree manslaughter charge, and let the jury consider just the charge of criminally negligent homicide.  Wow, it sounds like this judge really wants to find Penny guilty of…something.  By dismissing manslaughter, the judge made it less likely that we would have a hung jury.   

Meanwhile, Penny’s defense attorneys objected to the judge’s decision, as they would have been satisfied with a deadlocked jury– if that was the honest opinion of the jurors. 

The jury returns Monday to consider the remaining charge of criminally negligent homicide. I hope that they follow their conscience, regardless of how badly Judge Wiley and the prosecutors want Penny in jail.

Dafna Yoran

Videos have unearthed of lead prosecutor against Daniel Penny, Dafna Yoran, in which she articulates a bizarre approach to the law.  Her sympathies, we see, lie with the perpetrators of violent crimes, whereas she is not too concerned with the victims (unless the victim is black and the perp is white, a la Daniel Perry and Jordan Neely). 

One can almost conclude that Yoran likes the idea that she is unleashing criminals to menace the tax-payers of New York City, as a type of ethnic vengeance.  

Yoran explains:

“ I had a murder, a case in which the defendant did not intentionally kill the victim. He went into an ATM in the Upper-West side and tried to rob an individual.  Unfortunately, it was an older individual.”

Hmm, a defendant who did not intentionally kill the victim who does that sound like?  Sounds like Daniel Penny, except Penny does not have Yoran’s sympathies. 

Presumably the perp in this case was black [editor’s note: yes, he was] because Yoran took an unusual interest in exonerating, or at least excusing this “unintentional” murder:

"The more I learned about the defendant, his life, and the circumstances...one should take into account the trauma of that individual. I really felt incredibly sorry for him." 

Yoran is interested in the backstory and the special circumstances which led a perp to rob an old man at an ATM, which led to the octogenarian dying on the street.  She felt sorry for the murderer! By the way, Daniel Perry wasn’t doing an armed robbery at an ATM, but Dafna Yoran doesn’t feel sorry for him.

In that case, Yoran wanted to know about the inner trauma of the perp. In the case of Daniel Penny, conversely, the particular circumstances that led Penny to restrain Jordan Neely don’t particularly interest her. Instead, she takes the most uncharitable interpretation of Penny’s motivations possible, as opposed to her usual uber-liberal approach to crime.

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