MANHATTAN (CN) — Three weeks of testimony came to a head on Friday when defense attorneys rested their case in the manslaughter trial of Daniel Penny, the 26-year-old U.S. Marine veteran charged in the chokehold killing of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway.
Penny did not testify. It was a decision that his lawyer, Thomas Kenniff, described as “complex.”
“It comes down to a lot of ingredients,” Kenniff told reporters outside the courthouse Friday. “But one of the ingredients is this jury has heard from Mr. Penny. They heard from him before he had the opportunity to have an attorney. They heard him in the minutes and hours after this incident.”
The Manhattan jury indeed heard Penny’s conversations with responding cops on the subway via bodycam footage from May 1, 2023, where Penny motioned to Neely’s lifeless body and told them that he “just put him out” with a chokehold.
Jurors also heard Penny’s subsequent interview with detectives, where he described the chaos that led up to his encounter with Neely. He said Neely was behaving erratically when he boarded the Second Avenue station, threw his jacket on the ground and immediately started threatening passengers.
Several witnesses testified at trial that Neely’s behavior terrified them.
“I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if you die. Kill me. Lock me up. I don’t care if I go to jail for life,” witness Caedryn Schrunk, who was on the train that day, recalled Neely saying.
Schrunk, a native of the Midwest, called Neely’s words “satanic.” While she acknowledged that Neely never touched anyone or directed his threats towards anybody in particular on the train car, Schrunk said said the episode caused her to fear for her life.
“This was the first time in my life where I took a moment, because I thought that I was going to die in this situation,” Scrhunk testified.
That’s why Penny decided to grab Neely from behind and restrain him on the floor of the subway car, Penny told detectives. Penny said he waited several minutes for police to arrive with Neely in his arms. When they did, eyewitness footage shows Neely’s body limp on the floor of the subway.
Penny told detectives that he wasn’t “trying to kill the guy,” but Neely was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital later that day. The city’s medical examiner ruled his cause of death was compression of the neck — a determination that was vigorously challenged by one of the defense’s final witnesses: Dr. Satish Chundru, a Texas-based private forensic pathologist.
Chundru lambasted the conclusion of the city medical examiner as one that was rushed and filed with speculation. He testified that Neely, a homeless man with a synthetic marijuana habit, was actually in the midst of a sickle cell crisis when he boarded the train.
That, not Penny’s on-camera chokehold, ultimately led to Neely’s demise, Chundru testified.
Chundru insisted that it was a medley of Neely’s drug use, schizophrenia and physical struggle with Penny that turned the sickle cell crisis fatal. On Friday, he continued to defend that hypothesis during a tense cross-examination by Manhattan prosecutor Dafna Yoran.
Yoran scrutinized Chundru’s assessment that physical exertion from the scuffle killed Neely.
“Are you saying that at least one cause of Mr. Neely’s death was the chokehold on Mr. Neely’s neck?” Yoran asked.
Chundru replied that it was a combination of multiple issues, but conceded that Penny’s restraint “played a role” in killing Neely.
Prosecutors put on a brief rebuttal case Friday, elicting testimony from NYPD officer Stephon Joefield. Joefield told the court that he felt a lingering pulse on Neely when he was called to the subway to render aid — a detail of importance to prosecutors, since prior testimony established that a lingering pulse is consistent with chokehold deaths.
Closing arguments will take place on Dec. 2. On Monday, counsel will return to the court for a charging conference; Penny’s lawyers say they’ll also move to dismiss the case then.
The case against Penny garnered national attention given its underlying themes of race and class. Penny is a white man from Long Island who was attending college for architecture and engineering when he encountered Neely on the subway last year. Neely was a Black street performer with a history of mental health issues, substance abuse and homelessness.
Throughout the trial, protesters frequently marched across the street from the Manhattan criminal courthouse demanding justice for Neely. Their chants could be heard from inside the courtroom, where several organizers from Black Lives Matter Greater New York sat with members of Neely’s family.
Penny could face a sentence of up to 15 years if he’s convicted on the top charge of second-degree manslaughter.