Opening statements were heard Friday in the trial of Daniel Penny, a New York City subway passenger who faces charges relating to the death of a homeless man who allegedly threatened other passengers last year.
Penny, a 25-year-old former Marine, faces up to 19 years in prison after he put Jordan Neely, who was allegedly threatening passengers, in a chokehold. Neely died at the scene.
“This is a case about a young man who did for others what we would want someone to do for us,” said Penny’s attorney Thomas Kenniff, according to Fox News. “Words like ‘I’m ready to die. I’m ready to serve a life sentence,’ when these threats spoken in the confined [space] in a moving subway car, you either bury your head and pray or you stand up and protect thy neighbor. That’s what Danny Penny did.”
In his own opening statements, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said that Neely “took his last breaths on the dirty floor of an uptown F train – at the time he died he was 30 years old, homeless, on synthetic drugs, and suffering from mental illness.”
“[Penny] did not intend to kill him, but under the law deadly physical force such as a chokehold is permitted only when it is absolutely necessary and only for as long as it is absolutely necessary,” Yoran continued in his 45-minute long opening statement.
Yoran said Penny held Neely in a chokehold for an “unnecessarily reckless” 5 minutes and 53 seconds.
Penny’s attorneys have argued that their client’s chokehold was justified due to Neely’s threatening behavior, but they also question whether the chokehold caused Neely’s death. The medical examiner never provided specific evidence to support the claim that Neely died of asphyxiation from the chokehold, the New York Post reported.
“Some people say I was trying to choke him to death, which is also not true. I was trying to restrain him,” Penny said previously, according to The Daily Wire. “You can see in the video there’s a clear rise and fall of his chest, indicating that he’s breathing. I’m trying to restrain him from being able to carry out the threats.”
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The defense will also try to admit evidence of Neely’s abuse of the drug K2, which was found in his system when he died, though the medical examiner’s report didn’t say how much of the drug was found. Penny’s defense has attempted to dismiss the case based on this information, but has been denied.
Neely was given Narcan – a powerful drug to combat overdoses – by first responders when they first arrived at the scene, CBS reported. Those first responders also didn’t immediately perform CPR because they found Neely had a faint pulse when they arrived. They did eventually perform CPR.
Penny said he took action against Neely because Neely was threatening passengers. Court documents from the incident indicate fellow passengers were afraid of Neely and feared for their lives, The Daily Wire reported.
“I want to hurt people, I want to go to Rikers. I want to go to prison,” one woman said Neely was yelling that day on the subway. That woman, who was with her son, said she hid behind his stroller as Neely allegedly charged at other passengers.
