Daniel Penny claims he acted in self-defense against threatening behavior when he put Jordan Neely in a chokehold on May 1, 2023. Penny has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
Defense attorney Steven Raiser told jurors to imagine they were on that train when Neely got on, “filled with rage and not afraid of any consequences.” Witnesses said Neely shouted about being willing to die, willing to go jail or — as Penny recalled — willing to kill.
“You’re sitting much as you are now, in this tightly confined space. You have very little room to move and none to run," defense attorney Steven Raiser told jurors.
“Danny acted to save those people,” he added.
During the monthlong trial, the jury heard testimony from subway passengers who witnessed the roughly six-minute chokehold, as well as police who responded to it, pathologists, a psychiatric expert, and Penny's relatives, friends and fellow Marines. Penny chose not to testify.
Jurors watched videos recorded by bystanders and by police body cameras and saw how Penny explained his actions to officers on the scene and later in a stationhouse interview room.
“I just wanted to keep him from getting to people,” he told detectives, demonstrating the chokehold and describing Neely as “a crackhead” who was “acting like a lunatic.”
“I'm not trying to kill the guy,” he insisted.
Some in the media and others have tried to paint Penny as a white vigilante who summarily killed a black man who was in need of help.
