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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32962 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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So I guess then you're of the opinion that the ex-Marine whose actions led to Mr. Neely's untimely demise should be charged to the full extent of the law? After all, Neely was merely ranting, and while it's a common feature of schizophrenics, isn't inherently dangerous. To assume that such behavior was indicative of a violent tendency was unreasonable. Neely did have a violent past, but unless Penny can demonstrate that he had prior knowledge of this violence (and he almost certainly can't), his actions weren't justified any more than if he had perpetrated them upon an arbitrary person.

To assume that such behavior was indicative of a violent tendency was unreasonable

Is it unreasonable? In my experience, I have observed two flavors of schizophrenic ranting: "untargeted" and "targeted". Untargeted being when someone is yelling at the air, or at inanimate objects. "Targeted" when they are getting in specific people's faces.

I don't know which Neely was doing but I actually suspect that P( engaging in targeted ranting | no history of violence ) < 0.05, making it reasonable to assume.

Ex-Marine whose actions led to Mr. Neely's untimely demise should be charged to the full extent of the law?

If the Marine was in Afghanistan and blew up an entire family (ironically targeting a man working for a US-based aid company) including 7 children because he mistook buckets of water in their car for bombs - that's not a problem, nobody gets punished. US generals tried to lie about it until the media moved on, concealing their error.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/13/us-will-not-punish-military-over-afghanistan-drone-killing-of-civilians.html

People broadly recognize that there are errors made in wartime, especially when the US wants to look tough. On the macro scale, that's why the US was there for so long, because it was so embarrassing to admit they had no clue what was going on and no hope of achieving their nebulous, ill-defined goals. On the micro scale, they wanted to minimize the embarassment of getting attacked by ISIS during their ignominious withdrawal, so there would've been a lot of pressure to bomb some ISIS related target.

But our ex-Marine instead kills some useless homeless insane person who's a blight on everyone around him and this is a major problem? This is bizarro world where insane violent criminals get treated with 1000x the dignity of innocent families. If we can accept collateral damage in wasteful wars, we should accept collateral damage in maintaining basic standards of behaviour.

Alternately, some bleeding heart liberal would say 'stop bombing innocent families, don't kill unhoused people on the subway'

But who says 'slaughter the innocent, treasure and protect the guilty!'

But who says 'slaughter the innocent, treasure and protect the guilty!'

I can actually defend Neely in the context of your analogy from a right-wing perspective. Bombing Afghan aid workers and not giving a shit but handling Neely with kid gloves is right and proper because he's American and the Afghan aid worker isn't. One of our guys is worth a hundred foreigners, that's the whole point of being a nation with national in-group preference.

And all the people on the subway aren't Americans? What about the 7-year-old girl he tried to abduct? Or the 67 year old woman he punched?

Precisely because he's threatening Americans, he should be a higher priority target than some random Afghans (a country that is almost as far from the US as it is possible to get). A nationalist, in-group focused USA would sort out its problems at home before going out to wreak havoc in the Middle East and North Africa.

That's fair. I don't dispute that Neely should have been in jail already for his previous crimes against Americans.

After all, Neely was merely ranting, and while it's a common feature of schizophrenics, isn't inherently dangerous.

Is it? Have you been polling schizophrenics for their proclivity to rant? I suppose we should assume 90% of the top level posters here are schizophrenics yeah?

From what I've read so far, Neely was walking back and forth yelling at nobody in particular that he was hungry and thirsty and that he didn't care if he went to prison and he was ready to die. He then aggressively threw his jacket onto the floor. I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that that this is the kind of behavior that is usually reserved for the mentally ill and intoxicated. You can call it ranting, raving, or whatever, but it's certainly not normal and is certainly distinct from going off on tangents in a space specifically dedicated for the purpose. News reports indicated that Neely was schizophrenic and I'm assuming that that influenced his behavior, but I'm no psychiatrist.

He had an open warrant for punching an elderly woman in the face. Also he had 44 prior arrests. Also multiple people have come forward to say he had tried to victimize others in crimes that went unreported. This is unsurprising, most crime is unreported, so anytime a criminal gets caught doing something, it’s safe to assume he has done it multiple times before. This means Neely probably victimized hundreds of people already, through acts of trying to kidnap a teen girl to trying to push people into the tracks (attempted murder). Thus the marine was fully justified in using non lethal means to subdue the threat. The fact he had an anomalous reaction, likely to due to drugs and an unhealthy lifestyle like George Floyd, isn’t the marines fault in the least.

Thus the marine was fully justified in using non lethal means to subdue the threat.

Unless the marine knew about that criminal history (and note btw that a large number of those arrests were for things like turnstile jumping), they are irrelevant to the question of whether he was justified.

I'm not very sympathetic to "The actor couldn't have researched that specific information, therefore their decision couldn't have been affected by those facts."

As a simple example, imagine that the unknowable facts were completely different. In this hypothetical Neely has won the Carnegie Medal for civilian heroism, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, is a shoo-in for canonization as a Saint, and did every other good thing you can name. The marine still hasn't done any biographical research. Do you think that that background would be just as irrelevant as the real one?

I don't blame people for being correct even if their reasoning can't withstand strict scrutiny.

Yes, that background would very obviously be completely irrelevant. To quote the California Supreme Court:

the law recognizes the justification of self-defense not because the victim "deserved" what he or she got, but because the defendant acted reasonably under the circumstances. Reasonableness is judged by how the situation appeared to the defendant, not the victim. As the Court of Appeal noted, "Because [j]ustification does not depend upon the existence of actual danger but rather depends upon appearances' (People v. Clark (1982) 130 Cal. App.3d 371, 377 [181 Cal. Rptr. 682]; see also CALJIC No. 5.51), a defendant may be equally justified in killing agood' person who brandishes a toy gun in jest as a `bad' person who brandishes a real gun in anger."

People v. Minifie, 13 Cal. 4th 1055, 1068 (1996). That seems to me to be 100 percent correct, both legally and morally.

I'm more sympathetic to that argument when we have months of factfinding followed by days of debate on the minutiae of the event, like in a criminal trial. We don't usually have that much detail available, so we have to use something to fill in the blanks the rest of the time.

The flow of information from the "unknown" background to the actor isn't magic, it's just not explained in the text. For a more concrete example of how background characteristics can change the events in a way that aren't reflected in a description, consider:

Alice shot Bob after he approached her in the alleyway behind 1st street. She stated that she feared for her life, as he was carrying knives "in an obvious manner". Bob was a 23 year old male who...

The end. Everything else is background that she couldn't have researched (and even the age would've been a guess). Otherwise it might change your opinion that he:

A) ...had a history of mugging, a rap sheet as long as your arm, etc.

B) ...was a culinary student heading home from class.

I think that variant A was likely justified, and variant B likely wasn't. Do you think that both are, or neither?

You seem to be saying that because Alice is being so vague, we don't really know what happened. But, it is more likely that it will turn out that Bob acted in a way that would cause a reasonable person to be in fear of her life if Bob is person A than person B, fine.

But that was not the claim I was responding to. Rather, the claim made by OP was: 1) Neely had a criminal history; 2) "Thus the marine was fully justified in using non lethal means to subdue the threat." That is simply wrong, unless the marine knew of Neely's history, which presumably he did not.

Arriving at a correct answer through insufficiently rigorous reasoning is what is called "guessing". We discourage it in students, we discourage it in AIs (at least to the point where they guess so well as to be indistinguishable from reasoning). I damn well want to discourage guessing before you attack someone, too.

He used the appropriate level of force. People forget it wasn’t just him - he had help from two black men who also thought this guy needed restraining. Are they guilty of aiding in murder? Why is no one calling for their arrest? This is a rhetorical question - I know exactly why they aren’t

BLM was calling for the arrest of all of them. Consistent, if wrong.

Didn’t see that, got a source?

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/man-dies-on-subway-chokehold-incident/

More comments

  1. Perhaps, but nevertheless Neely's criminal history is irrelevant.

  2. The others did not cause Neely's death. If anything, they made it less likely that Neely would die, by reducing the need for Penny to use great amounts of force.

On your 2nd point - did they really?

If the marine restraining Neely was in the wrong and jumped the gun, intervening on Neely's behalf would have made it less likely that he dies. Instead, they enabled the marine.

I'm very much on the side of the marine and the men who assisted, but you cannot so neatly excuse the 'extras' from culpability if you see Neely's death as a grave injustice. If you're going to be pissed at the marine, you should be pissed at the others.

Saying "Actually, the other two men could have potentially saved Neely's life by helping restraining him" is a disingenuous redirection from the obvious racial dynamics at play. That may have pull with you, but I'm betting most people who are even aware of the incident don't even know there were others involved.

We could investigate the reasons behind that state of affairs as well, but the answers will also lie in that general direction.

intervening on Neely's behalf would have made it less likely that he dies.

Well, yes, intervening on Neely's behalf would have made his death even less likely, but that is not the standard.

If you're going to be pissed at the marine, you should be pissed at the others.

Again, I don't see why that is the case. As I said, they did not cause his death. Perhaps if they had known that what the ex-marine was doing was dangerous they might have had a duty to stop him, but we have no reason to think that they knew that.

Saying "Actually, the other two men could have potentially saved Neely's life by helping restraining him" is a disingenuous redirection from the obvious racial dynamics at play.

My entire point is that the racial dynamics are NOT obvious, because their is another, very important difference between Penny and the others: Their actions.

Actually from a legal perspective you’re wrong - helping restrain someone so that they can be more effectively executed makes you an accomplice. Once again, I ask why no one is calling for these people to also be prosecuted, when Chauvins fellow officers who didn’t even touch Floyd all got heavy sentences?

No, in New York, as in most places, an aider and abettor must share the intent of the perpetrator:

Section 2 of the Penal Law makes a principal in the crime charged any person who "aids and abets in its commission". It does not, however, make one a principal merely on the basis that, in retrospect, we may say that in an objective sense this person was helpful or of use to the actual perpetrator of the crime. There is a subjective element as well. As one legal scholar has pointed out, "An aider and abettor must share the intent or purpose of the principal actor, and there can be no partnership in an act where there is no community of purpose." (1 Burdick, The Law of Crimes, § 221, p. 297.) That intent is required for one to be held liable as a principal on the basis of his having aided and abetted the perpetrator of the crime of murder was pointed out in People v. Monaco (14 N Y 2d 43) where this court said: "In the absence of some statutory synthesis of intention which makes out any homicide to be murder, intended or not (such as Penal Law, § 1044, subd. 2, in respect of a person engaged in felony), whether a homicide is committed `with a design to effect' death depends on adequate proof of such a design by each person charged." (14 N Y 2d 43, 46; emphasis supplied.)

More comments

walking back and forth yelling at nobody in particular that he was hungry and thirsty and that he didn't care if he went to prison and he was ready to die. He then aggressively threw his jacket onto the floor.

What, do you think, would have happened next. This seems to be leading up to a certain kind of action, no?

Probably nothing, in my experience. That raises an interesting question: Penny was apparently from Long Island, so he might have been more frightened of Neely than a more worldly person would have been (or perhaps not. Perhaps Penny came to NYC often and had seen his share of homeless people. Or, perhaps Neely was in fact behaving in an unusually frightening manner.

"A more worldly person wouldn't be scared of a raving lunatic and would just know that's the cost of city living"

That misstates the issue. The issue is NOT whether or not it is a cost of city living; it is whether a reasonable person in Penny's position would have believed that Neely posed an imminent danger. There is actually a lot of case law which struggles with this particular issue. Eg: Calif Criminal Jury Instruction 505, on self-defense, says: "When deciding whether the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, consider all the circumstances as they were known to and appeared to the defendant and consider what a reasonable person in a similar situation with similar knowledge would have believed." Well, does that mean a reasonable New Yorker, or a reasonable tourist, or something else? For example, the California Supreme Court has rejected the idea that a jury must consider what a "reasonable gang member" or a "reasonable battered woman" would believe, People v. Humphrey, 13 Cal. 4th 1073 (1996).* I would personally say that a jury should hear evidence of how conversant Penny was with ranting homeless people and should take into account how someone with that level of familiarity would have responded (that is part of "similar knowledge," IMHO), but then I am partial to criminal defendants.

*Though evidence that a battered woman might actually perceive a danger is admissible. But that is a different question than whether the belief is reasonable; self-defense requires both that the defendant have an actual belief that danger is imminent and that the belief be reasonable (though in CA and elsewhere, having an actual, but unreasonable belief = imperfect self-defense, which is a partial defense).

Well, it seems they joined in after Penny initiated things, which is a different scenario. I might have joined myself, to keep things from escalating, even if I didn't think Neely was an actual threat.

"It's not 'Nam Smokey, there are rules" -- if you're gonna fight with bums and expect not to be arrested, you need to wait for them to very clearly hit you first. This does put one at a disadvantage, but them's the breaks.

Cameras ruining all the fun these days, you can't get away with saying they swung first smh

No cameras showing the start of the incident here. Not that that will help Penny; the general rule of authority is that it started when they saw it.

I think the facts haven’t come out to discern whether he should be charged.

But I’m less talking about whether Neely deserved to be killed, and more talking about the public response to his actions - irrespective of his death. This same outcry happens when there are other random acts of violence that catch the headlines. Michelle Go, for instance.

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