NEW YORK — Opening statements are set for Friday in the manslaughter trial of Daniel Penny, a white Marine veteran accused of choking a distressed Black subway rider to death.
An anonymous Manhattan jury is deciding the manslaughter case surrounding Jordan Neely’s 2023 death, which prosecutors call a reckless killing but Penny claims was self-defense. The case has rattled fault lines surrounding race, homelessness, perceptions of public safety and bystanders’ responsibility.
Penny’s critics see him as a vigilante killer of an unarmed man who was behaving erratically and making dire statements but hadn’t assaulted anyone in the subway car. Supporters credit the 25-year-old Penny with taking action to protect frightened subway riders — action that he has said was meant to defuse, not kill.
Both camps have held demonstrations, and the case was absorbed into the United States’ fractious politics as Republican officials spoke up for Penny and Democratic ones attended Neely’s funeral.
“This is not an easy case of a bad man doing a bad thing,” prosecutor Dafna Yoran told prospective jurors during the selection process. While Penny’s intent might have been laudable, she said, “what we’re going to ask you to look at is whether he went too far.”
Penny’s lawyer Steven Raiser, meanwhile, has said that a conviction “will have a chilling effect on every New Yorker’s right and duty to stand up for each other.”
Jurors, who were quizzed about their own subway experiences, will hear opening statements and possibly some witness testimony Friday. It’s not clear who prosecutors’ first witness will be.
Neely’s life was tattered by mental illness and drug use after his mother was murdered and stuffed in a suitcase when he was a teen, his family has said. By 30, he sometimes entertained subway riders as a Michael Jackson impersonator, but he also had a criminal record that included assaulting a woman at a subway station.
Penny, who’d served four years in the Marines, has said he was going from a college class to a gym when he encountered Neely on a subway May 1, 2023.
Neely was begging for money, shouting about being willing to die or go to jail, and making sudden movements, according to witnesses. Some were alarmed, others blasé, court filings said.
Penny, who has said Neely was threatening people, put his arm around the man’s neck and took him to the floor.
With a bystander recording some of the encounter on video, Penny held Neely for about six minutes, prosecutors wrote in court papers. The hold continued as the train stopped, many people got off, two others helped restrain Neely, and another warned Penny, “If you don’t let him go now, you’re going to kill him.”
Penny ultimately released Neely nearly a minute after his body went limp, prosecutors said.
“I put him out,” Penny told police. He later added that he had simply wanted to “de-escalate” the edgy situation and wasn’t trying to injure Neely but rather “to keep him from hurting anyone else.”
City medical examiners determined that Neely died from compression of the neck. Penny’s lawyers have indicated they plan to question that finding.
They have sought unsuccessfully to keep jurors from hearing some evidence, including Neely’s lack of a weapon and Penny’s stationhouse statement to detectives.
Judge Maxwell Wiley declined both requests. He ruled that Penny willingly spoke to investigators without a lawyer, and that the question of whether Neely was armed — or someone could reasonably have thought he was — is relevant.