A jury on Monday acquitted Daniel Penny in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a crowded F train in a killing that electrified the city.
Penny, a 26-year-old former Marine, walked out of Manhattan Supreme Court a free man after the jury found he was not guilty of negligent homicide, the only remaining charge against him after a judge dismissed the top charge of manslaughter last Friday.
The ex-Marine’s six-minute chokehold of Neely, a homeless street performer with a history of mental illness and drug abuse who’d raged on the train before Penny and other passengers intervened but hadn’t physically accosted anyone, triggered contentious debates about public safety on the subways.
After the jury delivered its verdict, supporters of Neely emerged from the courtroom inflamed, with one woman wailing openly while she was comforted by another onlooker.
“Black folks is gonna have to be on alert now. We’re just going to have to take care of ourselves.” said one woman who identified herself as part of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network but declined to give her name. (Sharpton, in a statement Monday afternoon, compared Penny to “subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz and said the acquittal represented “the blatant legalization of civilian vigilantism.”)
Penny and his lawyers left the courtroom briskly, without addressing the throngs of reporters gathered outside, and couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
But Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, spoke to reporters outside the courthouse just after the verdict was delivered.
“I miss my son. My son didn’t have to go through this, I didn’t have to go through this either. It hurts. It really really hurts,” said Zachery, who’d been in the courtroom throughout the trial. “The system is rigged, come on people.”
Donte Mills, an attorney representing the family in a civil suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court against Penny last week, urged anyone upset by the acquittal to help a stranger in need, recalling Neely’s last words that he was hungry and thirsty.
“Everybody that’s pissed off at this verdict. I challenge you to go outside today and help one person. That’s my challenge. If you’re angry, if you’re hurt, go help one person. That’s how we beat the system.”
In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg credited his office’s prosecutors with diligently pulling together the best case they could despite facing threats and harassment over the course of the trial.
“The jury has now spoken,” Bragg said. “At the Manhattan D.A.’s Office we deeply respect the jury process and we respect their verdict.”
Politicians sympathetic to Penny were quick to celebrate the acquittal, with Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov calling it “poetic justice” that Penny was represented by Thomas Kenniff, who was Bragg’s Republican challenger in 2021.
“And now he and Penny have both prevailed against this woke, self-serving, criminal-loving DA,” she wrote on X.
‘One Man Who Was Willing To Stand Up’
On the afternoon of May 1, 2023, Neely entered the F train shouting that he was hungry and thirsty, and ready to die or go to prison for the rest of his life.
Penny then accosted the angry man, bringing him down and maintaining a chokehold until the police came even as other passengers called out that he was killing Neely.
Over the course of the trial, prosecutors from Bragg’s office argued that while the ex-Marine may have had reason to intervene initially he crossed a line by maintaining his chokehold for minute after minute even as other passengers warned he was killing Neely.
Penny’s defense attorneys countered by painting him as a good Samaritan watching out for fellow subway riders who were deeply frightened by Neely.
“The government is scapegoating the one man who was willing to stand up at the moment he was needed,” Steven Raiser, another of Penny’s lawyers, told the jury during the final days of the trial.
Prosecutors asserted Penny had ample training to know the six-minute-long headlock could prove fatal, yet ignored every sign Neely was dying.
“He kept going until a man died. He must be held accountable for that,” Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran told the jurors.
Supreme Court Judge Maxwell Wiley had dismissed the top charge of manslaughter on Friday afternoon after the jury said it had been unable to reach a unanimous verdict following three days of deliberations. Penny had still faced up to four years imprisonment had he been convicted on the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide.
‘A Horrible Situation’
Neely’s death sparked days of protests and subsequent violent police crackdowns amid a vigorous citywide debate about public safety on the subways and the use of violence to maintain it.
Eric Adams, who just after Neely’s death gave an address noting that the dead man had the same name as his son and declaring that “Jordan Neely’s life mattered,” last week strongly suggested his sympathies in the trial were nonetheless with Penny.
The mayor praised Penny in a CNBC interview as “someone on that subway who was responding, doing what we should have done as a city in a state of having a mental health facility.”
Adams added, “I do know we have a broken system of dealing with severe mental health illness in our, not only our subway system but on our streets.”
But Penny’s acquittal drew a harsh verdict from Gwen Carr, whose son Eric Garner died in 2014 after then NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo put him in a chokehold in Staten Island in another killing that triggered widespread protests.
“No one deserves to be choked to death,” Carr said outside the courthouse on Monday.
