OAN Staff James Meyers
9:33 AM – Monday, December 9, 2024
A Manhattan jury has acquitted Daniel Penny of any criminal wrongdoing in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a crowded subway.
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The jury acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide, which could have put him behind bars for up to four years, in Neely’s chokehold death in a crowded F train in May 2023.
This comes after the top charge of manslaughter was tossed on Friday after jurors twice said they couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict.
Jurors sided with Penny’s defense attorneys, who had argued that the Marine veteran was justified in rushing to protect others aboard the subway when he subdued the crazed man. Lawyers also questioned whether there was enough evidence that the chokehold caused Neely’s death.
“Who do you want on the next train ride with you?” one of his lawyers, Steven Raiser, said in his closing statement in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“The guy with the earbuds minding his own business who you know would be there for you if something happened? Or perhaps you just hope that someone like Jordan Neely does not enter that train when you are all alone, all alone in a crowd of others frozen with fear?”
Additionally, the acquittal comes after jurors heard from more than 40 witnesses, including passengers who described Neely’s terrifying outburst on the train before Penny approached him from behind and took him down at the Broadway-Lafayette station.
One subway passenger testified she was “scared s–tless” hearing Neely ranting about being “willing to die and go to jail.” She ended up thanking Penny for what he did, who also screamed that “someone is going to die today.”
Furthermore, a mother who was with her 5-year-old son going to a doctor’s appointment testified that she was so scared of a “belligerent and unhinged” Neely that she barricaded her son behind his stroller.
Evidence revealed during the trial that Neely was not carrying a weapon at the time, with cops finding a muffin in his pocket.
New York Mayor Eric Adams (D-N.Y.) even came to Penny’s defense , saying the Marine veteran did “what we should have done as a city” by protecting others that day.
However, prosecutors argued that Penny went “too far” and that his actions turned criminal when he kept Neely in the hold after nearly all of the frightened passengers had fled the train.
“What’s so tragic about this case is that even though the defendant started out trying to do the right thing, as the chokehold progressed, the defendant knew that Jordan Neely was in great distress and dying, and he needlessly continued,” prosecutor Dafna Yoran said in her closing statement.
Trial evidence revealed that Neely had the synthetic marijuana drug K2 in his system at the time of the incident. Jurors were also told during the trial that Neely was diagnosed with schizophrenia, telling doctors in 2021 that he heard the “devil’s voice.”
To help his case Penny’s mother, sister, friends and fellow Marines took the stand to testify for his character.
The defense’s medical expert, forensic pathologist Dr. Satish Chundru, claimed that Neely died not from Penny’s chokehold, but by “the combined effects of sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint, and the synthetic marijuana.”
During the trial Penny declined to take the stand. Jurors heard him tell arriving cops on the train “I just put him out,” before making a choking gesture with his arms.
Later on, at Chinatown’s 5th Precinct, Penny claimed during an interrogation that he was trying to “de-escalate the situation,” and that he didn’t want to hurt Neely.
“I’m not trying to kill the guy,” the Marine veteran told two detectives, as prosecutors watched him through a one-sided mirror. “I’m just trying to keep him from hurting anybody else.”
Meanwhile, Neely’s death, and Penny’s arrest 11 days later, caused a firestorm about whether Penny’s actions were justified.
“This case is about a broken system, a broken system that does not help our mentally ill or our unhoused,” Penny’s attorney Raiser said at the end of his closing statement.
“In fact, it is that broken system that led us, that is interwoven into the very fabric of this case.”
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