Good for the jury for finding Daniel Penny not guilty. But this does not erase the cynical, wrongheaded, and unwarranted prosecution by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg against a Good Samaritan. Daniel Penny believed he was saving lives a year and a half ago on the subway when he restrained Jordan Neely, who was threatening to harm commuters.
After the acquittal, Bragg issued a statement in which he claimed, “As with every case, we followed the facts and the evidence from beginning to end.” If only.
Neely, a homeless man, had been arrested 42 times between 2013 and 2021. Other subway riders at the scene reported feeling terrorized as Neely said he was “ready to die.” There were also legitimate questions about whether the chokehold Penny held him in actually killed him. When the police questioned Penny, he said that his only intent had been to protect the others in the subway car that morning.
Yet Bragg threw the book at Penny, charging him with both manslaughter in the second degree, which carries a potential 15-year prison sentence, and criminally negligent homicide, which has a four-year maximum sentence. On Friday, after the jury deadlocked on the manslaughter charge, Bragg’s office conspired with the judge to drop it and have the jury focus on the lesser charge instead. Not only was this an unethical gaming of the system, it completely backfired when, after deliberating for less than an hour on Monday morning, the jury came back with its “not guilty” verdict.