In May 2023 I sent newsletter subscribers an email titled Another Politically Incorrect Race Rant (sign up now if you want to receive these gems). Below is the excerpt that applies to this week’s news that Daniel Penny was acquitted of negligent homicide in the killing of Jordan Neely.
The most interesting case since George Floyd came in New York this month, where white ex-Marine Daniel Penny killed black panhandler Jordan Neely. This became a hot-button issue in part given the onslaught of videos on social media showing tense situations on trains, often black people intimidating white people. Neely got on the train and started shouting and threatening passengers. Penny put him in a chokehold and accidentally killed him.
One of the jurors in the Zimmerman trial said in a television interview, “his heart was in the right place.” I wouldn’t call walking around with a gun having your heart in the right place. I’d say you want to shoot someone. But I would say that (“heart in the right place”) of this ex-Marine who choked out Neely.
The onslaught of videos of tense train situations in which passengers don’t step in have prompted me to ask myself, would I do anything? Would I just keep quiet and mind my business? Or would I stand up for whoever’s getting picked on? It’s usually the weakest passengers. Well, Penny stepped up to be a hero. Probably a little early, and a little excessive, but everybody on the train was relieved that he subdued Neely. He had help from other passengers.
Manslaughter is inflicting death without malice. This ex-Marine accidentally inflicted death. He’s guilty, open-and-shut case. Heart in the right place, sure, but guilty.
This case wouldn’t be the most interesting since George Floyd if that were all. I’m watching to see what a jury of his peers say. Flash back to the 1980s, the peak in American crime rates (by far) … Bernhard Goetz shot four black men on the subway. None of the four died, but one was paralyzed. Goetz was acquitted of attempted murder and assault in a nod to the genius built into the concept of trial by jury. That verdict, which is what Penny will be banking on, is an example of jury nullification, where the jury disregards the letter of the law to deliver what it sees as justice.
Sidenote 1: This goes both ways. I believe jury nullification is what acquitted OJ after Rodney King. And a friend told me his jury anecdote in which a local black man stole a car, led cops on a chase, crashed and fled the scene on foot. My friend says the man was guilty as hell but two or three black jurors wanted to acquit. In wake of Michael Brown (same area), nobody want to argue. The man was acquitted.
Sidenote 2: if you’re a fellow proud boy who geeks out on Anglo-American history, read about Bushel’s Case, in which Quaker William Penn inspired a jury of commoners to acquit him despite English law. This underappreciated, early American who founded the Keystone State and our original capital brought the concepts of religious liberty, trial by jury and habeas corpus to the American DNA (and almost converted Peter the Great).The Goetz verdict came at a time when New York subway was a dangerous place by all accounts (see this colorful 1982 piece from the NYT Mag). New Yorkers of the 1980s acquitted Goetz in proof that people were fed up with crime. Just six years later they elected their first Republican mayor in almost 30 years, former U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani, who ran on a “tough on crime” platform.
Like Goetz, Penny will be judged by citizens of his time and place. His trial will test whether New York City is in fact as dangerous as you could be led to believe from social media and right-wing outlets, or if it’s all shrill shrieking from suburban dorks afraid of big cities and public transit even when crime is low.
If Penny is acquitted, and at least some New Yorkers want idealistic white boys from the burbs emboldened to save the day (“his heart was in the right place”), I’d say it’s more durable proof than the election of Eric Adams that New York has a crime problem.
But if NOT acquitted, a conviction would be a resounding endorsement that NYC is still the safest big city in America.
That’s my take. Let’s see what happens.
He was acquitted. I’d say New Yorkers are fed up with crime, even if it doesn’t seem bad to me. I’ve visited New York about twice a year since moving my family to the States, usually alone on business. Once I had my wife, three children and father-in-law in tow.
That visit was the only time I was even remotely bothered on the subway, both were a low-degree nuisance. One day there were two addicts on the train, “out on their feet” as they say in boxing. They were asleep standing up. It reminded me of a video or two I’ve seen of people having their friend record while they wind up and swing on a standing-addict-on-the-nod with the hardest right hand they can muster. The addict wakes and the attacker walks off, no need to hurry. I wouldn’t do something like that, but it occurred to me that these two on the train were sitting ducks.
The other nuisance was a couple of girls and their gay pseudo-trans friend loudly discussing their sexual exploits of the weekend within earshot of most of the car, including my fourth-, second- and first-grade children. It got uncomfortable when one of the girls cited a threesome that didn’t happen because the guy, who wasn’t cut, could rise to the occasion. That was annoying (having to listen to the story, not the failed threesome).
I never saw vagrants trying to scare the urbane white dweebs.
Maybe I’m jaded from living on the St. Louis Metrolink for years. A black New Yorker who’s lived there since the 80s told me he thought the Metrolink was dodgy. He could see that professionals don’t use it. There are uncomfortable moments but they’re not the same. You don’t get vagrants trying to scare passengers because the almost entirely black, working-class passengers wouldn’t be scared. They sure as hell won’t give out any money to somebody being rude.
What you get on the St. Louis Metrolink or you did when I rode in the 2000s, is groups of hoodlums up to mischief. They surround single young women trying to get phone numbers. They break out in freestyle rap songs. They are known to intimidate or assault the private security guards who check tickets.
The scariest part about the Metrolink is that, unlike the New York subway, you’re often alone. It’s quite common to be sharing the platform, outside at night, with a group of hoodlums and there are no witnesses in sight. You could have a 20-minute wait all by yourself, and them of course. And then you could be alone on the train with them.
Comparatively, I’ve never felt unsafe on New York’s subway. But I have limited experience, especially with my wife and children in tow.
New Yorkers are fed up. That’s what this verdict said. And it’s not a total surprise. We’ve seen it in the elections of “tough on crime” candidates in deep-blue places across the country.
The progressive left needs to understand…
By the way, that image at the top is William Penn on the subway. Not bad?