Daniel Penny arrives at court in New York on Nov. 18, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
NEW YORK — Jurors began deliberating and soon revisited some of their legal instructions Tuesday in the trial of a military veteran charged with using a fatal chokehold to subdue a New York subway rider whose behavior was alarming other passengers.
The anonymous jury is weighing manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges in the death of Jordan Neely, a troubled street performer who was homeless. The veteran, Daniel Penny, has pleaded not guilty and maintains that his actions were justified.
In a reflection of the complexities of the closely watched case, the jury asked within the first 75 minutes of deliberations to rehear Judge Maxwell Wiley’s instructions on justification defenses and on the definitions of the crimes charged. After the re-reading and 90 more minutes of deliberations, jurors headed home for the day without reaching a verdict.
Penny, 26, has said he was protecting fellow subway riders and intended only to restrain Neely and hold him for police, not to hurt him. Prosecutors say the Marine veteran used far too much force for too long when he gripped Neely by the neck for about six minutes.
The case has animated debate about public safety, societal responses to mental illness and homelessness, the line between self-defense and aggression, and the role of race in all of it.
Forming a tableau of the divisions surrounding the case, a small number of protesters outraged by the death of Neely, who was Black, routinely wait for Penny, who is white, to arrive at court, as does a Penny supporter. Some well-known Democratic politicians paid respects at Neely’s funeral, while Penny has gotten support from prominent Republicans.
New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, cast the case this weekend as an illustration of mental health system failures that ultimately had Neely making threats in a subway car.
“We have to recognize we have a mental health crisis and we’re not doing enough to solve it,” the mayor said in a WOR-AM radio interview. He added that he didn’t want to prejudge the jury’s decision.
The 30-year-old Neely sometimes entertained passersby with Michael Jackson impersonations but also struggled with depression, schizophrenia and drug use after his mother was strangled during his teen years. Penny was a college architecture student who served four years in the Marines.
Witnesses said Neely boarded a train under Manhattan on May 1, 2023, started moving erratically, yelling about his hunger and thirst and proclaiming that he was ready to die, to go to jail or — as Penny and some other passengers recalled — to kill.
Penny came up behind Neely, grabbed his neck and head and took him to the floor. The veteran later told police he’d held Neely in “a choke” and “put him out” to ensure he wouldn’t hurt anyone.
City medical examiners ruled that Neely was killed by having his neck compressed in a chokehold. A pathologist hired by Penny’s defense contradicted that finding, attributing the death to a variety of other factors.
Penny’s lawyers argued that he used what they term a “civilian restraint,” departing from the chokehold technique he’d been taught in the military, in order to control Neely without rendering him unconscious. Prosecutors say Neely had the training to know that what he was doing could kill.
Wiley told jurors Tuesday that if they convict Penny of manslaughter, they won’t be asked for a verdict on the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide. If they decide he’s not guilty of manslaughter, they’ll consider the second charge.
Manslaughter requires proving that a defendant recklessly caused another person’s death. The standard entails, among other things, consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that an action will be deadly.
Criminally negligent homicide, on the other hand, involves engaging in serious “blameworthy conduct” while not perceiving such a risk.
Both charges are felonies. Neither carries mandatory prison time, but both carry the possibility of it — up to 15 years for manslaughter, or four for criminally negligent homicide.
Deliberations will resume Wednesday.
