MANHATTAN (CN) — Jurors started deliberating Tuesday in the manslaughter trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine Corps veteran charged with the 2023 chokehold killing of homeless straphanger Jordan Neely on a Manhattan subway.
Penny faces two charges: manslaughter in the second degree and criminally negligent homicide. New York Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley instructed the jurors that, in order to convict Penny on either crime, prosecutors must have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he caused Neely’s death and was not justified in using deadly physical force.
“The defendant would not be justified if he was the initial aggressor of deadly physical force,” Wiley told jurors Tuesday, adding that one can be the “initial aggressor” without making physical contact with another person.
Manslaughter is the more serious charge, and requires proof that Penny acted recklessly to cause Neely’s death. A criminally negligent homicide conviction means that Penny caused Neely’s death with criminal negligence.
Penny can only be convicted on one of the two charges. He faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on the top count of manslaughter, but there is no minimum prison sentence.
Penny’s fate is now in the hands of 12 Manhattanites — among them a Yorkville insurance lawyer, a retired Morningside Heights librarian and a Filipino-born health care worker — all of whom spent the past three weeks hearing testimony from experts, first responders and witnesses on the train that day.
Witnesses described being terrified of Neely’s erratic behavior when he boarded the subway at the Second Avenue subway station in Manhattan, threw his jacket to the ground and started shouting threats.
Caedryn Scrhunk, who testified on Nov. 7, told the court that she recalled Neely yelling “‘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.’”
Those threats, Penny’s attorneys claim, are what prompted the then-24-year-old former Marine to grab Neely from behind, take him to the ground and restrain him on the floor of the subway car.
Video played for the jury shows Penny holding Neely with a chokehold for about six minutes in total until Penny releases Neely’s limp body before officers arrive. Neely was unable to be revived by first responders, and the New York City medical examiner’s office deemed Penny’s chokehold to be the cause of death.
But Penny’s attorneys claim that it was actually complications from Neely’s sickle cell trait that killed him, not their client’s chokehold. They brought in their own expert pathologist, Dr. Satish Chundru, who testified that Neely’s demise was “not a chokehold death.”
During closing arguments, prosecutor Dafna Yoran lambasted Chundru’s assessment as one that “makes no sense” and was driven purely by the $90,000 he stands to make as a defense expert. She read from an article in the American Society of Hematology, which called sudden death from sickle cell trait an “extraordinarily rare occurrence.”
“I’m sure that you had absolutely no question in your mind about what caused Jordan Neely’s death,” Yoran said Tuesday. “It’s too obvious.”
The trial captured national attention, speaking to underlying themes of race, class, crime and public safety. Much has been made of the statuses of the two men involved; Penny is a white architectural student from Long Island, while Neely was a Black man who was unhoused and battling mental health and addiction issues at the time of his death.
Penny has been lauded among conservative circles as a good Samaritan. Some progressives have likened his behavior to an act of racist vigilantism, however.
Outside of the courtroom, protesters gathered in support of Neely — a common occurrence throughout the trial, where the demonstrators’ chants could frequently be heard through the court’s open windows. Senior organizers for Black Lives Matter Greater New York who sat with Neely’ uncle and father in the gallery.