The jury has concluded its third day of deliberations without reaching a verdict in the Manhattan homicide trial of Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely. WABC News in New York reports that the jury will resume deliberations on Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern time.

The jury has been out for about 18 hours, starting with the first 75 minutes of deliberations on Tuesday (summation and the jury instructions occurred before that, starting on Monday of this week). To my mind, 18 hours is a long time for a jury to be out when the case involves a single, short-lived factual scenario and just two counts. On the other hand, although there have been a number of notes, none so far — at least in the reporting I’ve seen — has indicated that the jurors are deadlocked.

The two counts in the indictment are second-degree manslaughter (i.e., reckless homicide) and criminally negligent homicide. To repeat what I said earlier this week about that:

I believe this is at most a negligence case and that Bragg cynically brought the recklessness charge to give the jury something on which to compromise in favor of conviction. That is, jurors would probably acquit if there was just an up or down vote on the negligence count; but if some jurors feel that something must be done to Penny because Neely died, the other jurors may go along with a guilty verdict on the negligence count if they can rationalize that they’re acquitting him on the more serious recklessness count.

Of course, if some jurors believe that Penny must pay a price because Neely died, and others are convinced that Penny engaged in a legally justified use of defensive force when Neely endangered passengers on the train, that could end in a hung jury. That is, if jurors are convinced that Penny did not commit criminally negligent homicide, they should not convict him of it by rationalizing that they are acquitting him on the more serious reckless homicide charge — regardless of whether one or more jurors insist that Penny should bear the blame for Neely’s death.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow. It is common for juries that have been out deliberating for several days to come in on Friday — with either a verdict or the revelation that they are deadlocked and don’t believe a unanimous verdict is possible.