The prosecution rested its case Monday in the manslaughter trial of Daniel Penny, who is accused of killing Jordan Neely by strangulation, after calling over thirty witnesses.
In addition, Penny, a former Marine, faces criminally negligent homicide charges for the May 1, 2023, murder of Neely, who battled homelessness and mental illness.
When Neely boarded an uptown F train that day, he had made threats, including that he wanted to return to prison for life, and he had also mentioned that he was thirsty and hungry.
According to their testimonies, some witnesses were terrified by him. According to the evidence given at trial and the prosecution, Penny choked him for approximately six minutes.
According to Penny’s lawyers, he took action to shield himself and other subway passengers from “a seething, psychotic” Neely.
Prosecutors contend that Penny failed to see Neely’s humanity and acted carelessly by releasing him only after he had gone limp and was already unconscious. Public safety and racial relations concerns in the city’s subway system were brought to light by the case. 26-year-old Penny is white.
Neely was Black and died at the age of thirty. Numerous people have hailed Penny as a hero and contributed to the collection of over $3 million for his legal fund, including elected Republican politicians. Others, however, have likened his behavior to that of a vigilante.
Neely’s autopsy determination
Dr. Cynthia Harris, the medical examiner who conducted Neely’s autopsy and determined that the chokehold caused compression to his neck, testified at the start of Monday.
She testified all day Friday and for the majority of Monday after taking the stand Thursday afternoon.
One of Penny’s lawyers, Steven Raiser, attempted to challenge her conclusion during hours of cross-examination by questioning if she thought Penny would have died from something else, like the synthetic cannabinoids in his system.
Only seven of the 10,000 overdose deaths her office had examined in the previous four years, she the jurors, were brought on by the drug Neely had taken.
She added that all seven of those individuals had defective hearts, in contrast to Neely.
Additionally, Raiser questioned her qualifications, whether she and the city’s medical examiner’s office had been influenced by outside parties, and whether she had presented proof that Penny exerted pressure on Neely long enough to result in her death.
Harris repeatedly responded that she thought Neely’s death was most likely caused by the chokehold.
Raiser also informed her that, based only on the spectator footage she examined, she could not determine with certainty how much pressure Penny was exerting on Neely’s neck, which contributed to the case receiving widespread media coverage.
Harris stated in her Friday testimony that she made her decision on the video and the investigation data around it, as well as the results of her autopsy.
When asked by prosecutors under redirect, Harris stated in his testimony that it was “very unlikely” that Neely could have passed away from anything other than synthetic cannabis.
The first defense witness was Jacqueline Penny, Penny’s older sister. She talked about their suburban childhood in West Islip, Long Island, which she described as a very safe, beachy, and friendly neighborhood.
She claimed that they were from a close-knit family and that their grandparents supported them after their parents divorced and her brother was in high school.
She claimed that she and Penny are still close even though she now resides in Miami and that she was only somewhat shocked when he joined the Marines after graduating from high school.
Alexandra Fay, Penny’s childhood friend who claimed to have grown up on the same block, followed her.
She testified that, like his sister, she knew him to be a person of integrity and honesty, and that their friendship had lasted into adulthood.
In the past four weeks, jurors have also heard from other subway passengers, responding officers, and the man who captured the video that made the case widely known.