Daniel Penny Acquitted: Hooray for the American Jury System

A Manhattan jury yesterday quite properly acquitted Daniel Penny of negligence after the judge dismissed the reckless homicide charge, upon which the jury had deadlocked. Strictly speaking, this may look illogical: Anyone willing to convict Penny of the greater charge of recklessness should, logically, have already concluded that he was guilty of the lesser included offense of negligent homicide. Juries often do not act with strict logic, and this can drive lawyers — who are trained to think in logical syllogism — up a wall. It is entirely possible that the jury took the cue from the judge’s dismissal of the recklessness charge to conclude that the prosecution’s case was collapsing and should be put out of its misery.

But logical or not, juries tend to get things right pretty reliably — at least when they are asked to do the basic job that juries exist to do. The Penny jury, like the juries in the cases of Kyle Rittenhouse, Derek Chauvin, George Zimmerman, or the killers of Ahmaud Arbery (or the grand jury in the Eric Garner case), was asked to assess gut-level questions of violent confrontations in the streets and on the subways. Whether those are framed as issues of self-defense, excessive force, or vigilantism, they come down to the same essential line-drawing issue. That issue is within the ordinary understanding of the ordinary citizen, and it invokes principles of law and justice that are of very long vintage. We get juries of various mixes of gender, race, education, and life experience, and we ask them to pool their sentiments. They usually get it right, both in acquittals and convictions.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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A Manhattan jury yesterday quite properly acquitted Daniel Penny of negligence after the judge dismissed the reckless homicide charge, upon which the jury had deadlocked. Strictly speaking, this may look illogical: Anyone willing to convict Penny of the greater charge of recklessness should, logically, have already concluded that he was guilty of the lesser included offense of negligent homicide. Juries often do not act with strict logic, and this can drive lawyers — who are trained to think in logical syllogism — up a wall. It is entirely possible that the jury took the cue from the judge’s dismissal of the recklessness charge to conclude that the prosecution’s case was collapsing and should be put out of its misery.

But logical or not, juries tend to get things right pretty reliably — at least when they are asked to do the basic job that juries exist to do. The Penny jury, like the juries in the cases of Kyle Rittenhouse, Derek Chauvin, George Zimmerman, or the killers of Ahmaud Arbery (or the grand jury in the Eric Garner case), was asked to assess gut-level questions of violent confrontations in the streets and on the subways. Whether those are framed as issues of self-defense, excessive force, or vigilantism, they come down to the same essential line-drawing issue. That issue is within the ordinary understanding of the ordinary citizen, and it invokes principles of law and justice that are of very long vintage. We get juries of various mixes of gender, race, education, and life experience, and we ask them to pool their sentiments. They usually get it right, both in acquittals and convictions.