Daniel Penny has been found not guilty of killing homeless man Jordan Neely on a New York City subway.
The Marine veteran, 26, faced 15 years in prison for charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally-negligent homicide after the incident on the F train last spring, which was partially recorded and sparked a passionate national debate.
After a bombshell decision to drop the manslaughter charge on Friday, the jury returned on Monday to decide if Penny committed criminally negligent homicide by putting Neely in the chokehold.
He then faced four years on a single count of the charge.
Today, the jury found him not guilty. There was cheering and clapping in the courtroom as the verdict was announced after a tense weekend of waiting and questioning the judge’s bias.
Neely’s family yelled horrendous threats, calling Penny a ‘racist c**t’ and warning: ‘It’s a small world, buddy.’
They were escorted out of the courtroom.
Judge Wiley allowed the prosecution’s request to drop the manslaughter charge even after previously questioning the legality of it last week.
Penny’s lawyers argued he acted in self-defense and in defense of other passengers after Neely terrorized their subway car and threatened them, but prosecutors say he overstepped into vigilantism and criminally killed Neely with a chokehold.
The state said it was ‘admirable’ at first that Penny stepped up to intervene, but that he failed to recognise Neely’s humanity and went too far when he took him down.
Neely, 30, was once among the city’s corps of subway and street performers and was known for his Michael Jackson impersonations. He struggled with drug abuse and a mental illness, and had a criminal record that included assault convictions.
Neely’s death on the subway car last spring sparked racial tensions in the Big Apple as groups such as Black Lives Matter sought to paint Penny as an overzealous, white ex-Marine targeting an innocent black man.
However, the national attention on the trial also saw many conservatives question why Penny, who was studying to be an architect, was even charged.
Despite a wave of public support and testimony from others on the train who said Penny acted out of bravery, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office pushed ahead with the prosecution. While two other men helped Penny subdue Neely, they were never charged.
Bragg was under intense pressure to charge Penny, with Democrats and protesters calling his death murder. Protests erupted near the Broadway Lafayette subway station where Neely died.
During closing statements defence attorney Steven Raiser theorised that the District Attorney’s office caved to pressure from furious protesters who divided the case on racial lines early on.
Penny has been described by fans as a hero and ‘modern day Batman’ who selflessly came to the aid of women and children on the train despite the risks to himself.
Penny was released from custody on a $100,000 bond after handing himself in to the NYPD. Under the bail terms, Penny’s parents put up $10,000 in cash and guaranteed the other $90,000 if he were to flee.
A crowdfunding effort for the ex-Marine received over $3million in donations. The page hit $1million in the hours after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted a link to it.
Donald Trump was one of many Republican voices to express support for Penny, saying he ‘was in great danger and the other people in the car were in great danger.’
During the monthlong trial, the anonymous jury heard testimony from subway passengers who witnessed the roughly six-minute chokehold, as well as police who responded to it, pathologists, a psychiatric expert, a Marine Corps instructor who taught Penny chokehold techniques and Penny’s relatives, friends and fellow Marines.
Jurors watched videos recorded by bystanders and police body cameras and saw how Penny explained his actions to officers on the scene and later in a stationhouse interview room.
‘I just wanted to keep him from getting to people,’ he told detectives, demonstrating the chokehold and describing Neely as ‘a crackhead’ who was ‘acting like a lunatic.’
‘I’m not trying to kill the guy,’ he insisted.
Penny did now take the stand in his own defense, with one of his lawyers noting that jurors did hear from Penny, in the form of his recorded statements to police minutes and hours after he put Neely in a chokehold.
‘Virtually everything he said then is consistent with credible testimony of his fellow passengers,’ Penny’s attorney Daniel Kenniff said.
A key debate between the prosecution and defense was whether Neely died from the chokehold.
Prosecutors noted the veteran continued to grip Neely’s neck after the train stopped and anyone who wanted to get out could do so, after bystanders urged Penny to let go, and even after Neely had been still for nearly a minute.
Multiple witnesses said Neely shouted about needing food and something to drink, whipped his jacket to the floor and said he didn’t care if he died or went to jail. They differed in descriptions of his movements and whether they were threatening. Several said they were alarmed by him and some were thankful when Penny subdued him.
A number of other passengers testified that they were scared of Neely and relieved that Penny grabbed hold of him.
A man who later stepped in and held down Neely’s arms, however, told jurors that he urged Penny to let go but that the veteran kept choking Neely for a time.
The defense contended Penny held on because Neely tried to break loose at points and that the pressure on the man’s neck wasn’t consistent enough to kill him.
Dr. Satish Chundru, who was called to testify by Penny’s attorneys, blamed Neely’s death on a combination of a sickle cell crisis and the effects of schizophrenia and synthetic marijuana.
The former Miami-area medical examiner’s statement came in stark contrast to one delivered just days earlier, from the doctor who conducted the city’s autopsy.
City official Dr. Cynthia Harris had maintained it was neither drugs nor the victim’s genetic disorder that took Neely’s life, while also ruling out cardiac arrest.
Dr. Alexander Bardey, a defense expert who reviewed Neely’s medical history, said on the stand he suffered severe schizophrenia for years, including believing dead rapper Tupac Shakur was ordering him to ‘change the world.’
Neely also suffered ‘paranoid fears that people want to hurt him,’ ‘grandiose delusions that people are jealous of him’, and reported hearing ‘the devil’s voice.’
Despite the shocking nature of Neely’s history, Manhattan prosecutors had sought to bar Bardey’s testimony from the trial, and attempted to have evidence of Neely’s mental illness and drug abuse withheld from Penny’s jury.
In his testimony, Bardey said he reviewed thousands of pages of Neely’s medical records dating back to 2015.
Bardey previously worked for Rikers Island jail, and witnesses said Neely was screaming about his willingness to return to the prison when he threatened subway passengers.
He said he had worked on hundreds of cases involving schizophrenia patients, and said Neel’s case was among the worst of his career.
‘His symptoms, I would classify as severe,’ Bardey testified.
‘He describes paranoid fears that people want to hurt him, grandiose delusions that people are jealous of him, said that Tupac instructed him to change the world, and that’s what he was doing.’