jury nullification
notes on luigi mangione, daniel perry, and the look of madness in the modern day
In the United States, it is legal for a jury to acquit a person on trial, even if the jury concludes that they are guilty of a crime. This practice is called jury nullification.
This week, I have been wondering: if I, as a resident of New York City, was picked to be on Luigi Mangione’s jury, and the evidence presented proved to me that he was guilty - would I exercise my right as a jury member to nullify his charge? If I had the power, would I let this killer walk free?
A few weeks ago, stickers with the words ‘free Daniel Penny’ appeared on poles and fences around the 100 Centre Street. There, inside the courthouse, Daniel Penny was on trial for manslaughter, for choking Jordan Neely to death.
Penny was acquitted by a jury the same day that Luigi Mangione was taken into custody. According to Penny’s lawyers, Penny is not the one who killed Jordan Neely, exactly. According to Penny’s lawyers, Jordan Neely was killed by K2 use, sickle cell trait, and mental illness. He was already dying, he was already dead. He was already aberration, threat, problem, on that subway car. Penny was just - finishing the job. Making the metaphorical real, etc.
In How To Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind, La Marr Jurelle Bruce builds a model of madness that includes medicalized madness and rage. Schizophrenic diagnosis in the western world is not objective. Mental illness is a politicized process, epistemological operation, and sociohistorical construction, rather than an ontological given.1 Black people expressing emotions related to anger - like speaking loudly and using threatening words - are often pathologized as insane.2
A mad Black person is a mad Black person is a crazy Black person is a problem is a death waiting to happen. A death already in the process of happening.
The passengers, in that uptown F train that Jordan Neely entered, were described afterwards as frightened. Jordan Neely was a fright. Madness, a Black body, belligerent, a loud threatening sound, a noise - these are frights. These are things worthy of being ignored, marginalized, and eradicated.
And; but. Jordan Neely was a person. A human. A whole. With a network of friends and family; people who recognized him. A dancer with a body capable of conjuring joy, defying gravity with moon walks3.
During Penny’s trial, the voices of protestors defending Neely entered into the room. The judge turned to the jurors and said, “anything outside this courtroom, as far as you’re concerned, is noise.”
Sultana Isham says “noise” is often used pejoratively to describe a sound that is unpleasant, dissonant, or of no value. Noise is the nigga of sound.4
On December 4, a group of powerful executives were planning to assemble at a Hilton in the heart of Midtown and they were there to ensure that a system of health care in America remains fastened in place. A system that kills people, many, many, many, many people; a system that is a fright, a system that makes many people feel unsafe.
A system that makes me feel unsafe. If I was in an uptown F and a walking talking health insurance card entered the car and started speaking loudly, saying threatening words like deductible and co-pay I would be very, very frightened. As I grow older and my body capsizes in strange and surreal ways I go to the doctor and they send me to another doctor and I think with dread about graduating school and not having health insurance, and what that will mean when even now the health insurance seems to be doing nothing, that will be seventy five dollars, that will be five thousand dollars, and doctors laugh at me and snipe at me, and I am paying down a deductible that will never end, and if I do not agree to this strange and terrible system I will, like, most definitely be at greater risk of dying, but am I dying already? another doctor laughs at me, no one can tell, and my health, in this country, is not a guarantee, far from it.
I've walked down the same street that Brian Thompson was walking down, that street with the Hilton. Many times, coincidentally enough. It is, actually, sort of a harrowing street to walk down. Walking down it during the midafternoon rush of everyone leaving work, I can feel the way my body ducks and dodges, dips and dives around the white men all around me who are all wearing suits, bulldozing down the walkway, my body an invisible slip, my body a tight coil, my body blinking in and out of existence to the people who pass me and don’t see me at all.
The first doctor I go to about the pain in my shoulder says it’s most likely stress. She is also a Black woman. She has me tap her shoulder and says, see? Her muscle is hard rock. We are both, I guess, very very stressed. She refers me to a physical therapist that my insurance does not cover.
The system of health insurance in this country makes me and many others feel unsafe. But it is not a black man speaking loudly on the uptown F. It is a white man walking down a Midtown street.
What kinds of social unsafety are deemed allowable, and what kinds are denigrated and cried out against and refused? How do we differentiate between those different forms of unsafety? What skins do each of them wear? What do we categorize as madness, and what do we categorize as annoying paperwork and are those things actually different or are they the same and just look different and how have our eyes been trained to see certain people as certain things? How have our eyes been trained to detect unsafety, and why have they been trained that way?
What kinds of murders are allowable, and what kinds are not?
In Lisa Miller’s profile of Jordan Neely, she describes a moment in 2021 when Jordan Neely hit a woman, and two civilians tackled him to the ground, restraining him and eventually turning him over to the police. It’s possible to restrain, without killing. It is possible to try to wrestle down something you think is wrong without killing it. It is possible to not kill.
And; but. It is also possible to kill. It is possible to kill, and be put on trial for that killing, and then be acquitted for that killing. In this country, there are ways, legally, to get away with murder.
So. If you were on the jury of Mangione’s trial. And the evidence proved him guilty. Would you let him walk free? Because you could. It’s completely legal to do so, in this country. It’s called jury nullification.
How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind, 7
Ibid, 8