Here is a questionable situation...

Asshole gets beat up for being an asshole, but dies in the process. Is it manslaughter?

So basically a car full of high school kids drove around smoking pot and shooting things (and a few people) with a soft gel gun. Basically a soft gel gun is the little brother of a paintball gun. It is neither lethal or something that should cause any injury. That being said, driving around shooting people is an asshole thing to do, even if the pellets in question are somewhat benign.

So they decide to approach a basketball court where some kids where obviously playing basketball. So a 17 year old named Ethan Liming (even the name sounds prickish) gets out of the car and starts to shoot at the kids and Deshawn Stafford approaches him and asks him for the gun (Stafford claims to have been hit in the face with a gel packet). Liming refuses to turn over the gun, a fight breaks out between the two.

If you automatically see Ethan as a white kid and Deshawn as black then you would be correct, which of course adds another element here.

At this point Liming is being a dick and Stafford has every right to knock him on his ass (in my humble opinion). But Stafford's brother and cousin decide to jump into the fight (while apparently Ethan's stoned friends in the car do not). At that point it becomes sort of a three against one beatdown, and Liming ends up dead from what was believed to be head trauma, possibly caused by hitting his head on the pavement. The two brothers and cousin are charged with assault and ultimately manslaughter.

The jury found them guilty of assault, but not the manslaughter. This appears to be a manner of threading the needle between jury nullification while still holding the two brothers and cousin accountable for something. Comparing the idea of intent to cause harm that leads to death in the case of someone like George Floyd/Dereck Chauvin and this situation makes for a sharp contrast. The cop was found guilty of murder for what was basically a police hold, while the Liming assault that ended in death was deemed not to be manslaughter. By law, any assault that ends in death is generally an open and close manslaughter case. In this case, however, they jury did not see it that way.

Not 100% sure how I feel about this one. Liming probably deserved a good ass kicking. But he didn't deserve to die. Was the beating excessive or was it just a freak thing? On the flip side I wonder out loud if three white dudes beat one black dude to literal death would they get off in today's environment with a similar result? I suspect not. I also suspect that even different charges (possibly third or second degree murder along with making it a hate crime) might have been brought had it been the other way around. I could see three white kids going away for a long time if they beat a black kid to death and I don't think anyone would care if the victim was being a prick or not.