NEW YORK — Manhattan prosecutors on Monday again accused Daniel Penny of failing to recognize Jordan Neely’s “humanity” during their closing arguments, weeks after he was accused of unfairly alluding to racial undertones. in one case where there is no hate crime charge.
“He did not recognize that Jordan Neely was a person,” Manhattan prosecutor Dafna Yoran told the jury. “He saw him as a person who needed to be eliminated.”
She claimed that Penny “was so reckless with Neely’s life because he didn’t seem to recognize his humanity.” She played the video of Penny’s police interrogation, in which he called Neely a “crackhead” and told detectives, “You know these guys, they push people in front of trains and stuff.”
“We’ve all spoken negatively about people like Jordan Neely,” she said. ‘We may have lumped them all together, but the context here is telling. When the defendant talks about Mr. Neely like that, he knows he most likely killed him. Can you imagine a reasonable person speaking? something like that about a human he or she had just killed?”
DANIEL PENY RETURNS TO COURT FOR CLOSING ARGUMENTS IN SUBWAY CHOKEHOLD TRIAL
Prosecutor Dafna Yoran leaves Daniel Penny’s trial at the Manhattan Supreme Court building in New York City on December 2, 2024. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
Penny was not told about Neely’s death when he voluntarily agreed to speak with NYPD detectives.
Yoran uses similar language before during the trial during her opening statement, and her team also allowed witnesses to describe Penny as “the white man” and a “murderer,” prompting Penny’s attorneys to object and ask the court to declare a mistrial over the language .
By saying that Penny did not see the humanity in Neely as race being unfairly invoked, this, combined with the different language, would make it impossible to get a fair trial. The judge rejected the earlier request for annulment.
During the defense’s closing arguments Monday, which preceded Yoran’s comments, Penny’s attorney, Steven Raiser, argued that the 26-year-old architecture student intervened after the city of New York turned away subway passengers when Neely, a 30-year-old year-old homeless man high on drugs and suffering from schizophrenia burst in and started threatening riders.
DANIEL PENY DEFENSE CALLS FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST TO TESTIMONY: ‘CHOKEHOLD DID NOT CAUSE DEATH’
Daniel Penny arrives at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse building in New York City on November 25, 2024. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
“The government wasn’t there. The police weren’t there. Danny was,” Raiser told the jury. “And when he needed help, there was no one there. Does the government have the nerve to blame Danny because the police weren’t there? Blame Danny for hanging in there when the police weren’t there?’
It took seven minutes for police to respond to the 911 call and 20 minutes for medics to arrive, he said. Neely was “on a collision course with himself,” and a “broken system” has failed everyone involved, the lawyer said.
Penny does on trial is charged with manslaughter and negligent homicide.
Neely had a lengthy arrest record, a documented history of serious mental illness, a substance abuse problem and an active arrest warrant when he boarded the F train car on May 1, 2023, and began shouting death threats, trial testimony revealed over the past three years. to soften.
Raiser noted that Penny used “a less aggressive” restraint than what he had been taught in the Marine Corps, arguing that he intended to hold Neely but not hurt him.
“What Danny did was not textbook,” he said. “He applied what he had learned as a Marine in a less aggressive manner… because the softer side of Danny told him to apply something less than a textbook Marine blood constriction by choosing not to squeeze Neely unconscious.”
DANIEL PENY DEFENSE CALLS FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST TO TESTIMONY: ‘CHOKEHOLD DID NOT CAUSE DEATH’
Jordan Neely is pictured in 2009. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Penny repeatedly calmed down when Neely stopped struggling and only squeezed to hold him when he tried to break free, Raiser said.
“If you have any doubts about whether Penny squeezed Neely to the point of death by chokehold, you need to look for another cause of death,” he said, noting how defense expert Dr. Satish Chundru testified that he believed Neely died from a combination of his use of the synthetic drug K2, his genetic sickle cell disease, psychosis and exertion from combat.
“Danny could not have foreseen a crescent-shaped death,” the lawyer said. “So he’s not guilty.”
Chundru’s testimony contradicted official autopsy findings Dr. Cynthia Harris from the New York City medical examiner’s office, who blamed Neely’s death solely on chokeholds after watching video of the altercation before toxicology results came back.
The defense also played bodycam video of responding officers, with one of them repeatedly saying Neely was still breathing.
This screenshot from a bystander video shows Jordan Neely being put in a chokehold on the New York City subway. (New York Lights/Juan Alberto Vazquez via Storyful)
Raiser painted a scene for the jury: the F train pulled into a station and the “tall and muscular” Neely boarded, screaming erratically, high on drugs. Neely had schizophrenia and a severe case of paranoia and psychosis, he said. The former Michael Jackson impersonator hallucinated conversations with late rapper Tupac Shakur and thought he heard the voice of the devil. Neely stormed onto the train, threw his jacket on the ground and declared he didn’t care if he died or went to jail, reportedly threatening to “kill a mother.”
“Will it be me? Will it be my children?” Raiser asked. “Everyone was frozen in fear.”
Daniel Penny will appear in court with attorney Steve Raiser on November 14, 2024 at the New York Criminal Court building in Manhattan. (Adam Gray for Fox News Digital)
He discussed the testimonies of several female passengers, all of whom described fear and panic. He repeated bodycam footage of officers speaking to them at the scene. They all had the same thing in common, he added.
“Daniel Penny is the one who has to protect them,” he said. ‘Why? Because he had something unique: his education. When Danny was acting, he didn’t know if Jordan was armed.”
Some of those passengers braved protesters outside the courthouse to repay the favor, risking their own safety to testify at the trial, he added.
He played 911 calls: early reports of a knife or gun, confusion and a delay police response.
A court sketch shows Daniel Penny and prosecutor Dafna Yoran on the first day of their testimony in Penny’s trial at Manhattan Supreme Court in New York City on November 1, 2024. (Jane Rosenberg)
Penny waited for officers to arrive, he said, and then willingly spoke to them without an attorney present, unaware that Neely had even died.
Yoran gave a closing statement on behalf of the prosecutor.
“No one had to die on May 1, 2023,” she said. “Jordan Neely entered the subway in an extremely threatening manner… so much less physical force would have done the job… Daniel Penny could have easily restrained Neely without strangling him to death. We are here today because the defendant used too much force for far too long in a way that was far too reckless.”
Yoran argued that Penny could have let go when bystanders asked him to, playing the video of the incident repeatedly, some of which was difficult to hear in court.
She claimed that Penny knew Neely was “probably” dead, but she didn’t care that he remained at the scene and voluntarily spoke to police officers. They didn’t tell him Neely was dead, and they didn’t arrest him. He surrendered 11 days later after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office secured a grand jury indictment against him.
If jurors do not reach a consensus by the end of the day Tuesday, Judge Maxwell Wiley asked them to return Wednesday to continue deliberations. Since the start of the trial, the court was in recess on Wednesday.
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Penny faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top manslaughter charge. He is also charged with negligent homicide.
