Alvin Bragg Is Trying To ‘Strong-Arm’ Daniel Penny Jury Into Guilty Verdict, Legal Expert Says

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andy McCarthy stated that the decision from Alvin Bragg’s office to drop the manslaughter charge against Marine veteran Daniel Penny is an attempt to “strong-arm” the jury to convict him on a lesser charge.

A jury is currently deliberating on charges of negligent homicide after the jury failed to come to a consensus on the manslaughter charge, to which prosecutors responded by dropping it. While supporters of Penny were glad that the most serious charge was dropped, several legal analysts, including McCarthy, have warned that Bragg’s office is “playing games” in an effort to influence the jury.

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“This really was never a recklessness case, the evidence doesn’t lend itself to that. I think he threw in the recklessness charge in the hope that it would increase his odds of getting a conviction by giving the jury something to basically compromise on,” McCarthy told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. “

“You know, he knew that they probably wouldn’t get him on the recklessness, so they could feel better about convicting him on the negligence, like they were being more fair. So what’s happened here is exactly that, in the sense that the recklessness charge after four days and 30 hours of deliberations is finally gone. But now the jury’s being told it’s got to come back and start from scratch on the negligence charge. And that’s really not the way the case was tried, because that was not the way the indictment tees it up.”

“So I think it’s really unfair to Penny in the sense that this should never have been I don’t think it should have been a case at all, but it should never have been anything other than a one count negligence case. And I think then it would have been decided by now,” McCarthy added.

Cavuto then asked whether Penny’s legal team could have a strong case for an appeal if convicted of negligent homicide following actions from the prosecution and Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley, who agreed to dismiss the most serious charge against Penny.

“I’ll take a chance and grant the people’s application,” Wiley said, instructing the jury to return Monday and deliberate the charge of criminally negligent homicide

McCarthy believes that there will indeed be a “good basis” for an appeal if Penny is convicted on the lesser charge. “This was a one transaction case and it’s uh, a fairly straightforward charge. The only wrinkle in the case is there’s a justification defense, but that’s not like we’re not talking rocket science here, right? So you have this pretty simple, straightforward thing,” he said.

“They took four days and 30 hours. They came into the judge this morning and said, ‘we can’t resolve the count that is in front of us.’ And he gave them the famous Allen charge, which is where the judge basically tries to strong arm the jury and to, you know, try to get back there and agree to something. They went back for a few more hours, still couldn’t agree. That’s a good time to call it a day, and that’s obviously not what they elected to do.”

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