Daniel Penny found not guilty in subway chokehold trial

NEW YORK – Daniel Penny has been found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely.

It comes after jurors told the court Friday morning they couldn’t reach an agreement on the top charge, second-degree manslaughter, and prosecutors moved to dismiss it, prompting the judge to controversially allow them to only deliberate the second charge.

Penny, a 26-year-old Marine veteran and architecture student, was charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for the subway chokehold death of Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man with schizophrenia who barged onto the train shouting death threats while high on a type of synthetic marijuana known as K2.

Penny’s side of the courtroom erupted in cheers, prompting an angry response from Neely’s side, including his father, Andre Zachary, who was escorted out of the courthouse along with several Black Lives Matter leaders after allegedly snapping.

DANIEL PENNY RETURNS TO COURT FOR CLOSING ARGUMENTS IN SUBWAY CHOKEHOLD TRIAL

Someone clapped, and Zachary turned and glared, “Are you trying to f—ing get killed?” 

Hank Newsome, a leader of BLM’s New York chapter, commented that “It’s a small world.” Others on Neely’s side of the courtroom were seen weeping at the verdict.

The incident happened on May 1, 2023. Neely barged onto an F train in Manhattan screaming death threats. Witnesses testified that Neely’s threats scared them more than a typical subway outburst would. They were thankful for Penny’s intervention.

Neely had a lengthy criminal record, an active arrest warrant, a history of psychosis and was high on K2, a synthetic form of marijuana that pathologists described as a stimulant. He also had the sickle cell trait genetic disorder.

Just three days earlier, a straphanger had been stabbed with an ice pick on a J train, according to reports from the time. It was about a month after a PBS reporter got sucker punched on a No. 4 train. There was a shove a week before that, and the victim hit the side of a moving R train and survived.

In that climate of fear, witnesses said they were terrified by Neely, who shouted death threats at them.

Witness Ivette Rosario, a 19-year-old student, testified that Neely shouted someone would “die that day.”

“I got scared by the tone that he was saying it,” she said. “I have seen situations, but not like that.

Penny, in a voluntary interview with police after the incident, raised concerns about a series of subway shoving incidents involving mentally ill people on the city’s transit system.

“He was talking gibberish…but these guys are pushing people in front of trains and stuff,” he told detectives. There were more than 20 subway shoves in the year before Penny’s encounter with Neely.

He was released without charges after the interview.

But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office secured a grand jury indictment days later, and Penny was arrested on May 12.

Jurors deliberated for a little less than four hours Tuesday and all day Wednesday, sending several notes to the judge. Among the items they asked for were videos of the chokehold and of Penny’s interview with police, as well as the judge’s instructions regarding justification for physical force and the definitions of recklessness and negligence. 

Penny would have faced a maximum sentence of four years in prison if convicted of the lesser charge.

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