Daniel Penny leaves the courtroom for a lunch break in New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
NEW YORK — For six minutes, Jordan Neely was pinned to a subway floor in a chokehold that ended with him lying still. But that’s not what killed him, a forensic pathologist testified Thursday in defense of the military-trained commuter charged with killing Neely.
A New York City medical examiner determined that Daniel Penny’s chokehold killed Neely, an agitated, mentally ill man whom Penny and some other riders found threatening.
But the defense’s pathologist, Dr. Satish Chundru, told jurors that Neely’s medical records and bystander video didn’t show telltale signs of known types of fatal chokeholds.
Among the discrepancies, he said: the location and extent of bruising on Neely’s neck, and the small amount of petechiae — small red spots caused by subsurface bleeding — on his eyelids.
“In your opinion, did Mr. Penny choke Mr. Neely to death?” defense lawyer Steven Raiser asked.
“No,” replied Chundru, who has worked as a medical examiner for county governments in Florida and Texas.
He said Neely died from “the combined effects” of synthetic marijuana, schizophrenia, his struggle and restraint, and a blood condition that can lead to fatal complications during exertion.
“The chokehold did not cause death,” the pathologist said.
Penny, 26, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. His defense says the Marine veteran and architecture student was defending himself and a car full of subway riders.
Neely, 30, sometimes entertained subway riders as a Michael Jackson impersonator. But he also had a history of psychiatric and drug problems and a criminal record that included assaulting a woman at a subway station.
When they crossed paths in a subway car on 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. Penny has said Neely lurched toward a woman with a small child and said, “I will kill.”
Penny put his arm around Neely’s neck, took him to the floor and held Neely there, with Penny’s legs around him, for close to six minutes, bystander videos show. Neely had stopped moving during roughly the last minute.
