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Notes -
Sure.
Is it different for non-deadly force? Obviously its not Murder if noone dies and not attempted murder without intent.
But if Neely had lived, I'm not clear on whether Penny would have been charged with assault.
I'm mulling over the various perspectives...
There have been posts on Neely in past culture war threads along the lines of "We should be punching disruptive members of society more." there have been even more extreme takes along the lines of "Barbarians are not moral subjects. Kill em." There have been counter-takes that you don't want random citizens playing judge-jury-executioner. There have been takes like "The system should be dealing with this. Neely shouldn't have been on the streets."
More information about the legal realities at play give more texture to these takes.
Re any force, the amount used must be proportionate to the threat that is reasonably believed to exist. People v. Terk, 24 AD 3d 1038 (-NY: Appellate Div., 2005).
But the real issue in this case is probably not going to be the initiation of the use of force, but its nature and length. Penny is charged with second degree manslaughter, which requires recklessness, and in NY " A person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation."
It obviously does not help him that one guy there warned that he might be killing Neely. And it does not help that two others began helping to restrain Neely; once that happens, arguably the threat posed by Neely is greatly reduced, and hence the need to use a chokehold is greatly reduced. Of course, I don't know how far into the event that happened. But the point is that the legal issues likely to be involved are quite different from the issues being discussed here.
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