A Manhattan jury found Daniel Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway last year. The decision came after the jury deadlocked Friday on the more serious second-degree manslaughter charge. Penny, a 26-year-old former Marine, would have faced up to 15 years in prison for a manslaughter conviction. The criminally negligent homicide charge had a sentence of up to four years. “Daniel Penny was acquitted Monday of criminally negligent homicide in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man with a history of mental illness whose final moments on a New York City subway train were captured on bystander video that set off weeks of… pic.twitter.com/ZsmdUir7xb — Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) December 9, 2024 Per CNN: The jury deliberated for just over an hour on the criminally negligent homicide charge. On the second-degree manslaughter charge, they deliberated for 16 hours before telling the judge they were deadlocked, and another three hours before saying they were deadlocked again. The case stems from the death of Neely, a 30-year-old street artist who struggled with homelessness, mental illness and drugs, on a subway car on May 1, 2023. Neely entered the subway car and began acting erratically, as he threw down his jacket and yelled at passengers that he was hungry and thirsty and didn’t care whether he died, witnesses said. Penny, a passenger, grabbed Neely from behind in a chokehold, forced him to the train floor and restrained him there for several minutes. When Penny let go of the hold, Neely was nonresponsive. He was later declared dead. Several minutes of the chokehold were captured on bystander video that spread widely and has been played repeatedly in court during the trial. WATCH: BREAKING: Daniel Penny found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. Protests erupt outside of courthouse in reaction to the verdict. pic.twitter.com/rWMKPWfMEj — Fox News (@FoxNews) December 9, 2024 Daniel Penny acquitted in lightning-rod death of Jordan Neely https://t.co/MfksIf6odL pic.twitter.com/KmEYesZPuz — New York Post (@nypost) December 9, 2024 NBC News reports: As the jury foreperson read the “not guilty” verdict, some observers in the courtroom applauded. Others began to audibly sob and yell, and were escorted out. “This is America. That is the sound of Black pain,” one person said outside of the courtroom in Lower Manhattan to the reaction. Chants of “no justice, no peace,” could be heard echoing from outside. The case divided people in New York — and beyond — in some cases along political and racial lines. Neely was Black. Penny is white. Some people viewed Penny as callous and his actions as criminal on the day he encountered Neely, who had been shouting and acting erratically when he boarded a subway train in Manhattan on May 1, 2023. Others contend Penny was selfless in his attempt to protect fellow passengers. The anonymous jury, made up of seven women and five men, were told before they began deliberating that they had to come to a unanimous decision on the top charge of manslaughter in the second degree before moving on to consider criminally negligent homicide. But Judge Maxwell Wiley changed that order Friday after jurors twice sent a note saying they could not reach an agreement.

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Pennsylvania police have detained a man that they believe to be a “person of interest” in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

A Manhattan jury has acquitted Daniel Penny of any criminal wrongdoing in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a crowded subway. 

A man is being held for questioning in connection with last week’s killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson in midtown Manhattan, according to three law enforcement officials who spoke to the New York Times. The man was identified based on a tip from someone who spotted him at McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The suspect […] The post PA Police Detain a Man in the NY Murder of Brian Thompson appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Chaos has erupted in Syria with the downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the rise of the terror group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), leaving the world guessing at what comes next. “There are no good guys here. Bashar al-Assad, really bad guy. [HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani], really bad guy. All these other terrorist groups, really bad,” Shapiro said Sunday in a video reacting to Assad’s ouster and exile over the weekend. “There are some people on the ground who presumably aren’t as bad; that would be, you would imagine, the Druze, the Kurds. But those are not the main forces that we’re talking about right now,” Shapiro said. Syria is broken down into a number of factions within the country itself, as well as influenced by its neighbors vying for greater control over the region. With so many players and interests at play, the outcome of regime change in Syria is impossible to predict, according to Shapiro. With Assad’s downfall comes some reasonable inferences, however. According to Shapiro, the situation for Christians in Syria, which was bad under Assad, is likely about to get worse. Christians in Syria are a minority group making up about 10% of the population. “What it means for Christians is a much more fraught existence. It was already pretty fraught in Syria,” Shapiro said. “All of this pretend that Bashar al-Assad was wonderful to Christians, that is not true. There were significant human rights predations against Christians on the ground, not only in the areas controlled by Sunni terrorists, but also in the areas that were controlled by Shia terrorists.” CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE In the United States’ favor, however, the downfall of Assad signals weakness in Russia and Iran, according to Shapiro. Assad in Syria was a useful ally for both Moscow and Tehran. Russia built several military bases inside Syria. Iran used Syria as a thoroughfare to ship weapons and extend its influence through terror proxies. “What does it really mean? It means that Russia is weak, Iran is weak. These were paper tigers,” Shapiro said, “and their attempts to invade Ukraine and invade Israel, respectively, those went really poorly for them.” “What you are watching is the complete collapse of the Russian-Iranian alliance in Syria, and it is indicative of the interior weakness of these countries,” he added. Iran’s influence has been especially blunted in the region. Assad’s loss is only the latest in a string of defeats for Iran’s most significant allies in the region. “It means that the Iranian regime is actually in quite real trouble here. All of their biggest proxies are gone. Hamas gone, Hezbollah gone, Assad gone,” Shapiro said. “That means the Shia influence game is beginning to wane, it’s beginning to end. The Houthis are basically isolated down there in Yemen. The Shia regime in Iran still has impact in Iraq, but internally they are much, much, much weaker right now.” My INSTANT reaction to the fall of the Assad regime, and what it means pic.twitter.com/RJZ5lU6ZPU — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 8, 2024

'Always free to invoke the Second Amendment'

'Some say it's stress induced edema'