A Navy veteran who used chokehold on agitated subway passenger was acquitted Monday in a death that became a prism for divergent views on public safety, courage and vigilantism.
A Manhattan jury returned its verdict, clarifying Daniel Penny of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely last year. A more serious manslaughter charge was dismissed earlier during the deliberations because the jury was deadlocked on this point.
Both charges were misdemeanors punishable by prison time.
Penny, 26, grabbed Jordan Neely around the neck for about six minutes in a chokehold that other subway passengers partially captured on video.
Penny’s lawyers said he was protecting himself and other subway passengers from an unstable and mentally ill man who made alarming remarks and gestures. The defense also disputed a city medical examiner’s conclusion that strangulation killed Neely.
Prosecutors said Penny reacted far too forcefully to someone he perceived as a danger and not a person.
The case amplified many of America’s divides, including race, politics, crime, urban living, mental illness and homelessness. Neely was black. Penny is white.
There were sometimes dueling protests outside the courthouse, and prominent Republican politicians described Penny as a hero while prominent Democrats attended Neely’s funeral.
The verdict ended a trial that took a tumultuous turn last Friday, when jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict on the manslaughter charge. The judge then dismissed it at the request of prosecutors — a rare request that prosecutors make in the heart of a trial.
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Penny served four years in the Marines and later studied architecture.
Neely, 30, was a former subway performer with a tragic life story: His mother was killed and put in a suitcase when he was a teenager.
As a youth, Neely paid tribute to Michael Jackson – complete with moon rides – on the city’s streets and subways, building a reputation among the artist’s fans and imitators. But Neely also suffered from mental illness after losing her mother, whose boyfriend was convicted of her murder.
Hospitalized for depression at age 14, Neely was later diagnosed with schizophrenia that sometimes caused him to hallucinate and become paranoid, according to medical records viewed during the trial. Neely also used the synthetic cannabinoid K2 and found it negatively affected his thinking and behavior, according to a 2019 hospital record. The drug was in his system when he died.
Neely told a doctor in 2017 that being homeless, living in poverty and having to “rummage through trash” for food made him feel so worthless and hopeless that he sometimes thought about killing himself, according to the hospital records.
About six years later, he boarded a subway under Manhattan on May 1, 2023, threw his jacket on the ground, and declared that he was hungry and thirsty and didn’t care about s he was either dying or going to prison, witnesses said. Some told 911 operators he tried to attack people or indicated he would harm passengers, and several testified they were nervous or outright feared for their lives.
Neely was unarmed, with nothing but a muffin in his pocket and did not touch any passengers on the train. Several riders testified that he didn’t even approach anyone. But one said he made sudden movements that alarmed her enough to protect her 5-year-old child from him.
Penny, who was walking from a college class to the gym, came up behind Neely, grabbed his neck, took him to the ground and “kicked him out,” as he told police on the premises.
Video from other passengers showed that at one point during the roughly six-minute wait, Neely patted a bystander’s leg and waved. At another point, Neely briefly freed an arm. But he stayed still for almost a minute before Penny released him.
“He’s dying,” an unseen bystander said in the background of one video. “Let him go!” »
A witness who intervened to hold down Neely’s arms testified that he told Penny to release the man, although Penny’s attorneys noted that the witness’s story changed significantly over time.
Penny told detectives shortly after the encounter that Neely had threatened to kill people and that the strangulation was an attempt to “deescalate” the situation until police could arrive. The veteran said he held on after the train stopped because he wasn’t sure the doors were open and Neely squirmed periodically.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I’m just trying to stop him from hurting anyone else. He threatens people. That’s what we learn in the Marine Corps,” Penny told the detectives, who read her her rights.
However, a Marine Corps combat instructor — who trained Penny — testified that the veteran abused a chokehold technique he was taught. Prosecutors also say the need to protect passengers quickly diminished when the train doors opened at the next station, seconds after Penny acted.
Although Penny himself told police he used “a chokehold” or “a chokehold,” one of his attorneys, Steven Raiser, presented it as a Navy-taught chokehold “modified as a simple civil constraint.” Defense attorneys argued that Penny did not consistently apply enough pressure to kill Neely, and they brought their own medical examiner to the stand to support their contention.
Contradicting the city medical examiner’s ruling, the defense pathologist testified that Neely died not from strangulation but from the combined effects of K2, schizophrenia, his struggle and restraint, as well as than a blood disease that can lead to fatal complications during exercise.
Penny decided not to testify. But many of his relatives, friends and fellow Marines did, describing him as an honest, patriotic and empathetic man.
“He was always a very calm, gentle-spirited person,” his sister Jacqueline Penny told jurors.
Prosecutors never accused Penny of deliberately killing Neely. The ultimately dismissed manslaughter charge required proving that a defendant recklessly caused the death of another person. Criminally negligent homicide involves engaging in serious “reprehensible conduct” without perceiving such a risk.
While the criminal trial was going on, Neely’s father filed a wrongful death suit against Penny.