Daniel Penny’s Subway chokehold process resumes Monday, with attorneys expected to begin their closing arguments after a break for Thanksgiving.
The 26-year-old architecture student and Marine Corps veteran faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter for the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old mentally ill homeless man who was high on synthetic marijuana when he burst into a subway car and started shouting threats at the passengers.
Neely had a warrant out for his arrest at the time. The case’s last witness was revealed before the defense had dropped the case – as well as a long criminal history and schizophrenia.
Daniel Penny arrives at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse building on Monday, November 25, 2024 in New York City. Closing arguments in Penny’s trial are set to begin Monday, as the Navy veteran is charged with manslaughter for the 2023 chokehold of Jordan Neely. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
Responding officers questioned Penny — without telling him Neely had died — and then let him go. District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office in Manhattan filed an indictment nearly two weeks later, and Penny turned herself in.
A diverse cast of witnesses for the prosecution testified that Neely scared them with death threats during a subway rampage that went beyond the typical subway rampages many jurors had previously witnessed on the city’s troubled public transit system.
Defense attorney Steven Raiser is expected to go first and spend about two hours giving his closing arguments. Bragg’s office will have the final say and would not reveal how long it could take.
Once arguments are over, Judge Maxwell Wiley is also expected to give thorough instructions to the jury before their deliberations, after the defense raised many objections to the way Bragg’s office handled the case, which the judge acknowledged early on . concerns about ‘prejudices’.
DANIEL PENY DEFENSE CALLS FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST TO TESTIMONY: ‘CHOKEHOLD DID NOT CAUSE DEATH’
Jordan Neely is pictured before going to see the 2009 Michael Jackson film ‘This is It’ outside the Regal Cinemas on 8th Avenue and 42nd Street in Times Square, New York. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Prosecutors allege Penny went too far when he shouted a warring party into a chokehold on a Manhattan subway after he began shouting death threats.
Neely was black and Penny is white, and prosecutors seemed to emphasize the racial undertones of the case in court, even though Penny is not charged with a hate crime. They allowed one witness to repeatedly describe Penny as “the white man” and another witness to call him a “murderer” despite no murder charges being filed in connection with the case.
Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran also brought up the term “murder,” prompting Wiley to ask the jury to ignore the term, explaining that “murder” means something different to a medical examiner than it does to a lawyer or a juror.
Witness Lauri Sitro testified that she has seen many unstable people in her 30 years of riding the subway, but this “felt different.”
A court sketch shows Arethia Gittings testifying in the trial of Daniel Penny at Manhattan Supreme Court in New York City on Friday, November 8, 2024. Penny, a Navy veteran, is on trial for the 2023 death of Jordan Neely in the New York City subway . (Jane Rosenberg)
“I was afraid for my son,” she testified under cross-examination. “It’s not like you can run to the next train with a five-year-old. I felt very relieved when Daniel Penny stopped him from moving sporadically.”
Sitro wasn’t the only woman who told the court that Neely scared them when he stormed onto the train, shouting threats and violently throwing his jacket. Several did, including Ivette Rosarioa teenage straphanger who said she just “wanted to get away,” and Arethia Gittings, who said she was “less scared” and stayed at the scene to talk to responding officers.
Gittings testified that it did not appear that Neely was going to give up when Penny and the other men stopped him, that she was especially terrified by the encounter after enduring previous attacks on other subways and that it did not appear that Penny did that. He applied pressure to Neely’s neck, but previously tried to keep him still while officers were on their way.
A court sketch shows Laurie Sitro giving testimony in the trial of Daniel Penny at Manhattan Supreme Court in New York City on Friday, November 8, 2024. Penny, a Navy veteran, is on trial for the 2023 death of Jordan Neely in the New York City subway . (Jane Rosenberg)
“I came back to thank Mr. Penny for what he did in that worst-case scenario,” she testified.
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Another female passenger to testify was Caedryn Schrunk, a Nike brand manager, who said Neely boarded the train and immediately filled the car with the stench of “dirty sweatpants.”
“I was afraid I was going to die at that moment,” she told the court.
In addition to the manslaughter charge, Penny faces a lesser charge of negligent homicide. Jurors must find that Penny acted with “recklessness” in convicting the lesser charge of manslaughter and “negligence.”
