One is that the charges against Daniel Penny are clearly strategic while being dubious. They knew that even New Yorkers wouldn't be dumb enough to convict on intentional murder because a chokehold is non-deadly force on its own.
They're trying to (wrongfully) throw Penny in prison under the claim that he was either reckless or criminally negligent.
They may hope that Penny's marine training will help to convince a jury that he knew the danger of what he was doing and did it anyway. I think this is going to work against the state because Penny had probably performed dozens of chokeholdes, and been placed in dozens of chokeholds during his training with no serious injury.
If the state fails on that charge, they might be able to convince a jury that Penny didn't know about the risk of death being placed on Neely; but, a reasonable person would know.
This is where the narcissism of big city leftists might get the better of Neely. After the death of George Floyd, every leftist on the planet suddenly became an expert on techniques involved in subduing people in fifteen minutes despite not even thinking it through. This certainty was so powerful that police departments started removing that technique from training despite the fact that 99% of people who aren't high on fentanyl are gonna be fine.
We don't know yet is Neely was on anything other than K2 (which is own uncle attested to) at the time of the chokehold; but, his history of drug use probably compromised his body.
How is it that a reasonable person should have known that a chokehold would threaten Neely's life? A reasonable person can Google chokeholds in MMA and see thousands of videos of people blacking out and surviving.
Say Neely was high on something. Is a reasonable person expected to know that? Is possible to expect a reasonable person to suspect that the person is high on something; but, oftentimes, the fact that a guy is on drugs is the reason why he's a threat in the first place.
What if Neely had a heart condition or lung cancer? Is reasonable person supposed to know or suspect that before acting?
Neely isn't guilty. Get the fuck over it and let him live his life.
Okay, one down...
The other thing is that we have to stop this craving to make the gray areas between lethal and non-lethal force pure black and white.
Shortly after the Rittenhouse story broke, the leftists were so passionate about seeing Kyle hanged that they latched onto the fact that Rosenbaum didn't have a gun and Kyle did; so, they said, that nobody with a gun is ever justified in shooting somebody who doesn't have a gun. I actually got a couple of dozen people to say that an armed woman with a gun should face murder charges if she shot a rapist who had his hand on her throat -- some of them walked it back because they were mostly men and realized how rapey that was making them look; but, the reaction was there.
Now, to be clear, I conceal carry and I know that, no matter what the circumstance, if I point the gun at somebody and fire it, I'm engaging in lethal force even if I don't kill the person. Even if miss, I'm engaging in lethal force. In some states, simply showing or unholstering the weapon could have you facing decades in prison unless you're damn well justified.
Stabbing somebody is always lethal force even if the person you stab doesn't die.
I'm not saying that we should put those into the gray area. If I shoot somebody in self-defense, I know full damn well that I'm confessing to having shot the person with the intent to kill or inflict serious bodily injury. From that point on, it's up to the state to disprove my claim of self-defense. The use of lethal force isn't always illegal itself, and it shouldn't be.
It's just that using lethal force, even in a clear self-defense situation, puts you at higher legal risk than non-lethal.
We generally see violent contact without a weapon involved as non-lethal. In most encounters, they are -- especially if you include combat sports. Still, how many people have been killed or seriously injured via the "Knockout game"? The likelihood of being murdered by someone's bare hands or being kicked to death is orders of magnitude higher than being murdered by an AR-15.
Trying to classify everything cleanly into law as lethal or non-lethal is a fool's errand and deeply pro-criminal.
Even in the realm of lethal force, people bring up the number of bullets fired, as if that's possibly an objective measure of proportionality. Some bad guys go down with one shot while some are still fighting after being hit fifteen times.
Maybe the attacker would have backed off before you even pulled the trigger three hours ago before he hit the bar; but, now he's feeling the bullets like a small punch to the chest.
With generally non-lethal force, there are plethora of things that you don't know about a person's body that could put your attacker at greater risk of death. Hell, the attacker might not even know what's wrong with his own body at the time.
The reality is that, no matter what, self-defense in every place that draws influence from English common law, including the entirety of these United States, puts the ball in the bad guy's court first. Self-defense is always a reaction to a threat which has willfully presented itself.
You can pretend that we all have perfect knowledge all the time, and that we're all reacting on the basis of the perfect knowledge all the time, to an extent -- but, that's a horrifyingly narrow-minded view that's also glaringly false. You can also wish that every action that a person takes could be stowed into a neat, little cubby hole to make everything clear and simple; but, that'll just empower the most physically strong and ruthless among us -- I thought that the left was supposed to hate that idea.
Maybe, just maybe, we should spend a few minutes a day to be better informed about what all this stuff means. If you can't afford that time, maybe hold your tongue.