NEW YORK (AP) The trial of a military veteran accused of carelessly strangling to death a homeless, mentally ill man following an outburst on a New York train is scheduled to conclude on Monday.
Daniel Penny has entered a not guilty plea to charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in connection with Jordan Neely’s death in May 2023. According to Penny, he defended himself against hostile actions.
His response to Neely hit people’s raw sensibilities and sparked discussions about public safety, urban life, race relations, and various approaches to homelessness, criminality, and mental illness.
Some people in New York and across the nation view Penny, a 26-year-old architecture student and former Marine, as a brave guardian of other subway passengers who thought the unpredictable Neely was about to attack. Penny is perceived by some as a white vigilante who killed a Black man who was in need of assistance.
Neely, 30, was well-known for his Michael Jackson impersonations and was formerly part of the city’s corps of street and subway entertainers. In addition to having a criminal record that included assault charges, he battled drug usage and a mental disorder.
The anonymous jury heard testimony from Penny’s relatives, friends, and fellow Marines, as well as from police who responded to the roughly six-minute chokehold, pathologists, a psychiatric expert, a Marine Corps instructor who taught Penny chokehold techniques, and subway passengers who witnessed it. The trial lasted for a month. Penny declined to give a statement.
Jurors observed how Penny justified his actions to officers on the scene and subsequently in a stationhouse interview room by seeing films captured by police body cameras and onlookers.
As he demonstrated the chokehold and described Neely as a crackhead acting like a crazy, he told detectives, “I just wanted to keep him from getting to people.”
He insisted, “I’m not trying to kill the guy.”
According to several witnesses, Neely yelled that he needed food and drink, threw his jacket to the ground, and declared that he didn’t care if he died or was imprisoned. Their descriptions of his movements and their level of menace varied. Some expressed gratitude to Penny for bringing him under control, while others expressed fear at him.
According to city medical examiners, Neely was murdered by the chokehold. That conclusion was refuted by a pathologist that Penny’s defense recruited.
According to the prosecution, Penny used excessive force despite having the intention of protecting others and showing no concern for the human life he was holding. Prosecutors have said that the veteran held onto Neely’s neck for about a minute after the train stopped and anyone wishing to exit could do so, despite the encouragement of onlookers for Penny to release her hold.
The defense argues that Neely attempted to break free at times and that Penny held on because the man’s neck wasn’t consistently under enough pressure to kill him. The pathologist’s testimony that the victim was killed by a number of reasons other than the chokehold is expected to be emphasized by Penny’s attorneys.
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