Daniel Penny Verdict: NOT GUILTY

Justice prevails!

When the trial opened on November 1st, prosecutor Dafna Yoran, who is a big fan of “restorative justice,” declared that Daniel Penny didn’t see Jordan Neely as a human being and just went for the jugular. Penny’s lawyer, Thomas Keniff, painted a completely different picture. He did his best to put the jury in that subway car, with Neely screaming in people’s faces that he intended to kill them. He said Penny stepped up to protect the women in the subway car from an out-of-control man who died due to a cardiac arrest brought on by an overdose or his sickle cell, not asphyxiation.

Throughout the trial, we learned that Neely had a pulse after Penny let him go when the police arrived. Police administered Narcan and tried sternum rubs, but never tried to perform rescue breaths because they didn’t have the equipment with them, and Neely was dirty, so there was a concern for disease.

While the prosecution got a couple of teenagers and a homeless guy to back up their claim that Neely was just doing NY subway things and Penny went at him, the rest of the witnesses testified that Neely was scary. One woman even said that she was relieved when Penny stepped in. 911 calls were played, and in all of the calls, Neely was described as the aggressor while Penny was the guy keeping him under control.

At one point, the judge had to remind the gallery to keep their reactions to themselves. Reports were that Neely’s family and their supporters were causing a bit of a commotion in the courtroom on multiple occasions.

We learned that the black man who stepped in to help Penny hold Neely in place initially lied to prosecutors, claiming that Neely had hit him, and that was what got Penny to act. He was given a non-prosecution agreement with the DA in return for his testimony against Penny.

The NY Medical Examiner ruled that Neely died of asphyxiation after watching one of the videos and before the tox screen was back.

The defense called family members and fellow Marines as character witnesses. Then they called their own forensic pathologist, who said that it was clear that Neely had died due to a combination of overdosing on synthetic marijuana, schizophrenia, and more. He pointed out that there was barely any bruising on the neck and almost no evidence in the eyes of asphyxiation.

“The government wasn’t there, the police weren’t there when the people needed help, Danny was,” defense attorney Steven Raiser said during closing. Prosecutor Dafna Yoran said that while Penny’s attempt to protect fellow passengers was admirable, “he just didn’t recognize that Jordan Neely’s life too needed to be preserved.”

The judge made multiple rulings against the defense throughout the trial, for instance, when he allowed a witness to continually call Penny a murderer on the stand, when he refused to have the protestors moved away from the courthouse, or the jury to a room where they couldn’t hear the bullhorns outside screaming that Penny was a murderer.

This trend continued when, after four days of jury deliberations, the judge, despite his earlier misgivings and the objections of the defense, told the deadlocked jury he was dismissing Count 1, and they could come back the following Monday to deliberate on Count 2.

The jury returned to deliberate on Monday morning and, within two hours, had returned a verdict on count two, Criminally Negligent Homicide.

NOT GUILTY

According to Matthew Lee, aka InnerCityPress, who was in the courtroom, there were threats issued against Penny from the Neely side of the courtroom before the judge threw everyone out.

Justice has been served, but it sounds like Penny will need security for a while.

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Lorraine Yuriar is a wife, mother, and lifelong conservative, currently stuck in a very blue state.