Dauphin County Magisterial District Judge Sonya M. McKnight, 57, is facing a case of modus operandi this week. However, the suspect showing the alleged pattern of criminal conduct is herself. McKnight is accused of shooting her ex-boyfriend in the head while he slept. The shooting took place five years after McKnight was cleared in the shooting of her former husband in the groin.
Michael McCoy, 54, was left blind in one eye and, according to the New York Post, McKnight tried to convince him that he had shot himself while he was sleeping.
The two were living together and McCoy said that he had repeatedly tried to cut off the relationship. Police stated that McCoy came home from a bar and found McKnight relaxing on his couch in her pajamas. McCoy said that he repeated his desire that she leave his house and said that he was going to enlist the help of her mother. According to the report, McKnight then “agreed to go.”
McCoy said that he went to bed around 11:00 p.m. only to wake up later with “massive head pain” and unable to see. He said that McKnight came into the bedroom and asked, “Mike, what did you do to yourself?” McKnight then called police. She told police that she was sleeping on the couch when she heard him screaming.
For an alleged accidental shooting, the shot was remarkably well placed and should have been lethal. The bullet entered McCoy’s right temple and exited his left temple. He is still blinded in his right eye.
Police found a gun registered to McKnight and her hands tested positive for gunshot residue.
McKnight was also accused of lying about her movements. She told police that she did not leave the home but that is contradicted by a neighbor’s security camera. McCoy is reportedly suspicious that the judge may have followed him to the tavern.
McKnight is now suspended from the bench and being held at the Dauphin County Prison on a $300,000 bail. The arrest has brought new attention to the 2019 case.
Her former husband, Enoch McKnight, was shot in the groin after a history of domestic disputes and protective orders. He was helping McKnight move her furniture out of the home when he was shot. She had reportedly asked him to come over to help her. He claimed that she shot him and called him a “cheater.”
It is not clear from accounts of what her defense was in the earlier incident, but no charges were filed. Enoch McKnight had previously pleaded guilty to domestic violence.
Judge McKnight now faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of a first-degree attempted murder charge.
Meanwhile Trump faces 800 years in prison for some boxes of papers
She is a suspended MAGISTRATE judge, a mostly political job paid $100,000+ a year; neither a law degree nor admission to the PA bar are requirements. When I practiced law in PA, these elections were mostly won by small-time political wannabees and lawyers who needed extra income or more visibility in a small area. This is the lowest level court in PA and there are scores, if not hundreds, of them. My only recollections of district magistrates (the name used at least until the late 1990s?) were (1) one who chided a young attorney in our office for attempting to read a recent decision by one of PA’s appellate courts from a paper-bound “advance sheet” – saying the magistrate would not be fooled because he knew the law didn’t come in paper back books and (2) the magistrate for the district in which we lived who told a juvenile he was required to stay in his neighborhood and was’t permitted to enter ours, where he was accused of some mischief.
Reflection of watching Perry Mason reruns: If all judges acted like the ones on the show, this would be a much better world.
I’m stuck back here with the American Founders wondering how the —- this happened in the first place.
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“We the People…secure the Blessings of Liberty TO OURSELVES and our POSTERITY,…”
– Preamble to the United States Constitution
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Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, 1802 (four evident iterations)
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof…
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The next thing you know, the global communist Deep Deep State “Swamp” Regime will void the Preamble and Constitution (i.e. the intent and letter of the law) and ensconce an utterly ineligible son of a foreign-citizen father in the White House, who will commit the treason of “fundamentally transforming” America and go on to indefinitely conduct a coup d’etat against the next actual legitimate American President.
Oops! That happened!
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“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
– Sir Walter Scott, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field
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Wait! Was that Sir Walter Scott or Karl Marx?
It’s difficult to perceive a difference in the application of the theme.
Somehow, it will be Trump’s fault. Where’s Dennis?🤣
Oh, Dennnnnnnnnisssss!!!
She of all people should know better. In her position she would have handled any number of criminal cases and bound them over for trial. Plus Dauphin County has the state capital of Harrisburg, a majority Black city full of violent crime and drug dealers.
The psychological posture of a person who would do these two things is remarkable for recrimination. In both situations, the men were rejecting her. In response, she connived herself into proximity and then attacked. Women who commit these sorts of crimes are invariably motivated by bitterness and vindictiveness, while at the same time, a deep desire to be loved and accepted by the man she hates.
If she gets a little help from the msm or some southern gentleman maybe she can place President Trump in Dauphin county the night of the shooting?
As a judge, wouldn’t she have known that the police would perform a powder residue test on her hand and on his hands? This is all kinds of stupid.
dang! at I thought my X was not right
Black female.. has to be not guilty.. or perhaps a white heterosexual male did it
dont you mean a neo-nazi white supremacist?
I don’t even have to ask what Party she votes with or who she votes for. We now have another Dem mayor who is freely committing blackmail and extortion by putting you out of business if you don’t give her thousands in campaign contributions. Arrest her? Ha! She got privilege, she do!
Another fun fact: I did not find a biography of McKnight, but magestrial district judges in Pennsylvania are not required to be graduates of accredited law schools and members in good standing of the Pennsylvania bar: https://www.pacourts.us/courts/supreme-court/committees/supreme-court-boards/minor-judiciary-education-board/judicial-qualifications.
Is this type of event going to be the hallmark of affirmative action when historians chroniclers of our history in another era and look back at all the incompetent, irrational and miserable options that we took under this very misguided ideological experiment?
Lawyers (and judges) should avoid the appearance of impropriety. Does shooting your ex’s in the groin and the head qualify as an exclusion?
“Judge McKnight now faces up to 40 years in prison . . .”
Ca you serve from prison on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals?
Asking for Leftist friend.
I guess Judge McKnight can spin it with that old razzle dazzle. And,
“He had it comin’
He had it comin’
He only had himself to blame
If you’d have been there
If you’d have heard it
I betcha you would have done the same
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3MIixEps4&ab_channel=Movieclips
Excellent comment!
It might not be obvious from her photo but she’s a Black woman. I picked up on this story what with all the Fani Willis news in Georgia going on lately.
I’m not a lawyer, not even in the legal profession, don’t even pretend online. Both women seem vastly incompetent. The trial of one’s life, the opportunity to nail an ex Prez caught committing election fraud on tape heard by millions. So you hire your secret boyfriend to investigate and pay him huge fees to take you on vacation. Really. And make up BS stories about using cash. Then take the stand in an unforced error to show everyone the angry Black woman stuff.
And the judge? Brilliant. People who are supposed to know how to work the system seemingly end up blowing it when they are on the other side of things. A big shot lawyer who won’t shut up when it’s what any lawyer would have her do, a head shooting judge that won’t wash the residue off her hands, and can’t just keep quiet until she has representation?
That merit stuff might have something to it.
Always Dimunists, aren’t they? A violent pack of ignorant apes.
Moral and ethical turpitude have no complexion, gender or preference, sexual orientation, religious persuasion, socioeconomic status, political preference, or place of national origin. It’s merely convenient for some to believe othewise.
@zzdoc
THEORETICALLY, you are correct. This shooter could have been of any race or gender. But as human beings, we detect patterns in things, and that is something that helps us survive as a species. When it comes to black women, in this country, we have all seen multiple videos of black queens trashing a convenience store, brawling at Chucky Cheeses’s, disrupting airports, getting into wig-pulling fisticuffs with other black women, and generally, acting the fool. Is it all black women, or are all black men criminals and thugs. No. But enough are, that we pick up on the pattern. When it is Hurricane season, does that mean we are going to clobbered by a massive hurricane. No, not all the time. But it happens enough, that we have a thing called Hurricane Season.
When we read about the Super-Bowl parade shooting a few days ago, and found out that a “couple of teenagers got into a disagreement”, did anybody with a pulse NOT know the perps were young black thugs? Picking up on these patterns is why white people, Asian people, and even higher-income black people move out of an area as soon the low income blacks move in. We all know that things are about to go to hell. When you read that a school has only one or two students (and often no students) who are Reading or Math proficient, do we not immediately know that it is a predominantly black school??? It should not be that way, but it is that way. African-American women are the worst bunch of people on the planet, collectively, according to Tommy Sotomayor, who is black himself. Look up his videos. 80% of their kids are born out-of-wedlock, and those kids are raised like their mothers – overly impulsive, ignorant and violent. And without real parental love and care. At least most of them. And if not most, then at least half. Then, when the Democrat Narrative of oppression and racism is added to the mix, it gets even worse. Because the State has become their “Daddy”, black women do not have to grow up to become women that black men want to wife up. Because too many black women are simply toxic. That is my opinion.
Disparate Impact theory would like a word with you.
She might have some control issues, lol. Amazing that he survived.
Virtually ALL black women (and men) have “control” issues. They have been allowed to “act the fool” carte blanche, with zero repercussions.
I don’t think that generalization is true.
Rough language warning. Tommy Sotomayor.
Hopefully, she will spend the rest of her life in prison, but who knows anymore? I am sure that she will invent some ridiculous excuse, unless she gets a sweet deal. It looks like with her prior shooting, she pled self-defense, and her husband then was an actual person with a criminal record. (Why was a judge married to an ex-con, anyway?) So she got off. This time looks like she does not have a leg to stand on.
She will become a legal analyst on MSNBC.
And paid millions!