Opening statements are scheduled for Friday in the trial against a former Marine accused of choking a homeless man to death last year in Manhattan after the vagrant boarded a crowded subway car and began behaving erratically.
The manslaughter case against Daniel Penny, 25, can finally progress following a lengthy jury selection in the May 2023 death of Jordan Neely.
The jurors are seven women and five men, with four of the jurors being racial minorities. Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office argued that Mr. Penny’s defense team pushed out a number of potential jurors because of their race.
“If you look at the entirety of their behavior, race is playing a huge part of it,” Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said in court Wednesday, according to The New York Post.
New York Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley sided with Mr. Penny’s defense team and allowed their juror rejections.
Race is a central part of the trial’s public spectacle.
Mr. Penny, who is White, and his actions toward the 30-year-old Neely, who was Black, sparked conversations about the former Marine’s supposed racially fueled vigilantism.
Others have defended Mr. Penny as a good Samaritan who stepped in during a man’s menacing episode.
Perhaps more important than the race of the jurors is their experiences on the subway.
Three of the jurors said they’ve been harassed while riding the rails, according to the Post, and nine of the jurors said they’ve seen someone have an outburst during their trips.
Mr. Penny faces up to 15 years behind bars if convicted in the incident where prosecutors said he kept Neely in a chokehold for roughly six minutes.
Neely eventually went limp and was later pronounced dead at a hospital. The city’s medical examiner determined the cause of death was compression of the neck.
Mr. Penny turned himself into authorities more than a week after Neely’s death. He was released on a $100,000 bond and pleaded not guilty to the charges last year.
In interviews with police immediately following the incident, the former Marine said Neely was shouting “I’m gonna kill you” and that he was “ready to die” and go to jail.
Mr. Penny’s lawyers have said they plan to argue that their client wasn’t applying enough pressure to kill Neely and that Neely had high levels of synthetic cannabinoid K2 in his body at the time.
Juan Alberto Vazquez, who recorded and posted a video of the incident that went viral, said at the time that Neely was yelling about his struggles of living on the street before he shouted “I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if I go to jail. I don’t have any food. … I’m done.”
Mr. Vazquez said Neely threw his jacket down at one point and screamed again about how he was ready to go to jail and get a life sentence.
Neely had been arrested more than 40 times in the past decade, including for assaulting a woman in her 60s and kidnapping a 7-year-old girl.
Neely had impersonated Michael Jackson in street performances. His family said he struggled with drug addiction.
Mr. Penny served four years in the Marines before being discharged in 2021. The Long Island native was looking for work as a bartender when the incident happened.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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