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Notes -
Since I was asked to elaborate: Just about every part of this comment is extremely low quality.
Excuse me? A 15 minute chokehold resulting in a dead person is "restraining"?
This is not in evidence. Unless you mean his prior assault arrests, which were not known to anyone on the train and thus irrelevant.
Neither of these remotely justifies death.
Yes. Restraining a person sometimes causes their death, as it did in this case.
We have information -- like his prior conviction for assault -- that those on the train did not. On the other hand, they had information we did not, such as his exact behavior at the time. Our prior for Penny acting violently or in a threatening way on the train should indeed be affected by his previous arrests.
Death requires no justification. The question is whether Neely's behavior justified Penny's actions, not whether they justified the result.
If Perry does get convicted of manslaughter, it is false that it would be for restraining someone. Death is an essential component. There is absolutely no reason to describe the events this way except to make it seem like Perry didn't do anything wrong, without addressing any of the relevant facts.
"Our" prior does not justify your claim that he was violent. This is at best extremely weak evidence; the only witness statement I saw claimed he was not violent, which while obviously far from perfect is better evidence.
This is just bizarre. Are you of the opinion that the consequences (or at least, expected consequences) of an action, have nothing to do with whether they are justified? I suppose this would be consistent with your idea that drivers shouldn't be held responsible for driving recklessly.
It is Penny's actions which are justified or unjustified, not what followed from them. It is true that he might be facing assault or strangulation charges rather than manslaughter if Neely hadn't die, but it is not Neely's death which requires justification; it is Penny's actions which led to that death. The distinction is important; skipping over it is how you get to arguments like "Neely's behavior didn't justify killing him". The question is whether Penny's actions in putting him in a chokehold and thereby risking Neely's death were justified, not whether Neely's death was justified.
You made a big deal about the severity of the punishment. Whether his actions were justified is not dependent on whether someone died, but the level of punishment, if a crime was committed, very much does depend on whether someone died. Why did you bother to make a big deal about the size of the punishment? Either he was justified and there will be no punishment, or he wasn't and is guilty killing another person, in which case a significant punishment is clearly appropriate.
I think this is just semantic games. We have legal standards for when civilians can use lethal force (for what I hope are obvious reasons) which amount to "it is justified to kill this person." Using lethal force does not always result in death, but death has to be a justifiable outcome in order for the use of deadly force to be legitimate.
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