A New York City jury on Monday found Marine veteran Daniel Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway car in 2023.
CBS News reports Penny, 26, pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
The judge dismissed the second-degree manslaughter charge against Penny on Friday after jurors said they could not come to a unanimous decision.
Penny’s lawyers said he was protecting himself and other subway passengers from a volatile, mentally ill man who was making alarming remarks and gestures. The defense also disputed a city medical examiner’s finding that the chokehold killed Neely.
Prosecutors said Penny reacted far too forcefully to someone he perceived as a peril, not a person.
The jury panel could only consider the negligent homicide charge if Penny was cleared of manslaughter, which is what the dismissal did. The CBS story outlined:
Word of the verdict comes after jurors deliberated for more than 20 hours.
Penny faced a maximum possible sentence of 15 years in prison on the manslaughter charge, or four years on the negligent homicide charge. There is no minimum sentence.
The acquittal comes after jurors heard from more than 40 witnesses, including passengers who described Neely’s terrifying outburst on the train before Penny approached him from behind and took him down at the Broadway-Lafayette station.
Penny himself did not take the stand during the trial, with his defense lawyers saying their client’s statements to police adequately described the encounter.
But several of his relatives, friends and fellow Marines did, describing him as an upstanding, patriotic and empathetic man.
“He was always a very calm, soft-spirited person,” sister Jacqueline Penny told jurors, AP notes.
While the criminal trial played out, Neely’s father filed a wrongful death suit against Penny as jury deliberation began on Tuesday, December 2.
More to come…
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