Case to proceed against man charged in subway death of Jordan Neely

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

Case to proceed against man charged in subway death of Jordan Neely

By Kim Bellware
Updated January 17, 2024 at 12:51 p.m. EST | Published January 17, 2024 at 12:23 p.m. EST



Daniel Penny arrives at Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday. (Frank Franklin II/AP)

A New York judge has declined to dismiss the case against Daniel Penny, the former U.S. Marine indicted last year in the chokehold death of subway performer Jordan Neely on a Manhattan train.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Maxwell Riley on Wednesday denied Penny’s motion to dismiss charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Penny’s attorneys have argued that the 25-year-old “risked his own life and safety” to protect other subway passengers when Neely began shouting and behaving erratically during the fatal incident last May.

According to eyewitnesses and video, Neely, 30, walked into the F train at the Second Avenue station and began shouting that he was hungry and “fed up” before removing his jacket and “aggressively whipped it to the floor,” according to freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez, who was aboard the train and recorded the fatal chokehold.

{snip}

By Kim Bellware
Kim Bellware covers national and breaking news for The Washington Post. Twitter https://twitter.com/bellwak

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/01/17/daniel-penny-jordan-neely-chokehold-death-case-proceeds/

[lapfog_1]

1. instead of choking him, someone should have offered him a sandwich.

throwing your jacket on the floor of a subway car does not warrant the death penalty

[Demovictory9]

3. Agreed

[brooklynite]

12. 1. Most people don't carry "a sandwich". 2. Directly engaging with someone ,mentally ill is not a good idea.

[ExciteBike66]

2. "Aggressive whipping" of jackets is the new "reaching for his waistband"

[moniss]

4. Good point

along with the "I went toward them because I was afraid for my life" line of phony justifications.

[Owl]

5. Good

[DBoon]

6. If "behaving erratically" is an excuse for murder

The streets would be littered with bodies.

[Tumbulu]

7. I think it is performative that he is being prosecuted

Last edited Wed Jan 17, 2024, 07:25 PM - Edit history (1)

and I am fed up with this knee jerk attitude that violent people should be ignored- just let them beat up elderly and disabled people. Which is what your comments supporting Jordan Neely, whose family was not even helping him, sound like.

The public workers ignored it- if you read the history of this person you will see that he had injured elderly people in his attacks. On numerous occasions. And would be picked up by law enforcement and then released again. How is it that all of you supporting this prosecution care not about elderly people on subways? That is how I read your comments.

So, this guy intervened. He made a mistake. Was his intent to kill there? Probably not.

I will be very surprised if a jury finds him guilty.

So why put him through this? To create a cause for the uber right nut jobs? Just to give them more talking points? And to discourage anyone else in the future from protecting fellow passengers from a violent person?

He always will have to live with the fact that he killed this person. That is a horror unto itself.

I do not see this as a case anything like the guy who showed up with a machine gun and shot people he perceived as threatening to him.

How many people on the jury have had to deal with being attacked by people on the subway? I bet quite a few.

I wish the left would not fall for the traps.

[RealityBasedNewYorkr]

8. Fellow New Yorker here

The homeless guy did not merely throw his jacket on the floor. He aggressively threatened passengers…and as someone who’s been on the receiving end of many such outbursts I completely agree with your assessment.

[Tumbulu]

9. thank you

just a miserable situation for everyone involved. And a tragic and terrible outcome.

[markpkessinger]

15. I am also a New Yorker . . .

. . . I have lived here for over 40 years. The fact of the matter is that irrespective of what this man may have done previously to other people, neither Penny nor anyone else in that subway car knew about any of that at the time Penny decided to intervene. I have encountered a lot of mentally unstable individuals in the 40+ years I've lived here. Sometimes, they have said things that could have been construed as hostile or possibly threatening, but in nearly all cases, they were ultimately harmless, their violent words notwithstanding.

So no, l do NOT accept that Penny was merely "protecting" people. And the last thing I want or need in this city is some self-appointed vigilante who thinks he's the world's knight in shining armor taking it upon himself to intervene in a situation he was not particularly qualified to assess!

[angrychair]

10. The guy killed someone

With the exception of certain extreme circumstances, if you are putting your hands on someone you are accepting the liability for your actions. The guy fucked up and he has to pay the price.
He is being charged with involuntarily manslaughter, which is completely appropriate given the situation.

[Tumbulu]

16. Well, we shall see if he is convicted

I seriously doubt he will, and thus I stand by my opinion that this prosecution is performative and that it feeds ever so nicely into the Republican narrative.

And it has a really bad stink to it. I depend upon the idea that if someone was attacking me in public that someone who could would try to stop them. This prosecution shouts out to any and all, ignore and let violent people victimize others.

My view is that this case is all about intimidating people from protecting each other in unpredictable situations. And punishing this person by putting him through a trial knowing there is little chance of conviction.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

25. Whoopsie. He choked a man to death.

Tell him he’s a bad boy and send him on his way

[no_hypocrisy]

11. Not surprised.

I had a criminal case. My client was a bouncer at a dive bar.

A patron was drunk and the bar continued to serve him. That made him more drunk -- and belligerent. He shouted at the guy on the next bar stool that he would kill him.

The owner was sitting on the other side of the bar. He directed my client, the bouncer, to take the drunk guy out of the bar. It was after 1 in the morning. My client dragged him to the door and outside. The drunk was left standing on the sidewalk, where he collapsed, fell backwards, and hit his head on the concrete of the sidewalk. I don't remember who called the Police, but they came quickly and charged my client three times including abandoning a person in distress.

There was video inside the bar that my client and I examined of the incident. We took it to an "expert" for analysis. The expert was a former police officer and now ran a security business. He explicitly told us we were in trouble because my client dragged across the floor a drunk man, who was resisting being moved, and more importantly, my client used an illegal Half-Nelson chokehold on the drunk.

My point: My client was liable for injuries sustained as he didn't safely relocate the drunk patron. There's a right way and a wrong way. I see parallels with the Subway situation in the original post.

Epilogue: We fortunately got a plea bargain for the criminal charges, but my client was found liable for the two brain hematomas found in the drunk's brain as a result of him hitting his head on the sidewalk. The guy almost died.

[Polybius]

14. A couple of things:

1) Couldn't you just not use the video in court?

2) Let's say that he just escorted him out, and then shut the door. The drunk walks across the street and gets hit by a car. Who's liable?

[no_hypocrisy]

18. Here's how it rolled out:

1. We didn't want the surveillance tape run in court. It would've convicted him. It showed that he didn't act accordingly to "bouncer protocol". He would have been held liable for the drunk's injuries by putting him in danger and then going inside the bar.

2. My client still would have been liable. Putting the drunk in danger and then abandoning him to potential harm. What he should have done was call the Police and let them take the drunk into (safe) custody.

[Miguelito Loveless]

19. Who's liable?

The bar that continued to serve him drinks after he was obviously intoxicated.

[TigressDem]

13. My Uncle had to go to trial for being over aggressive in stopping a rape.

So basically, he stopped the rape and left the guy in a pile. Guy lived and sued.

Uncle didn't do any jail time, but it was outlined that he may have gone a bit overboard.

I think his defense was adrenaline of the moment and not wanting the man to get away.

[Tumbulu]

17. Prosecuting people for protecting someone else really infuriates me

I am sorry that your uncle had to go through this.

[TigressDem]

20. He's Italian, kinda gave him a little street cred.

But there is a line at times.

Like this guy on that choked the guy to death because he was acting in a threatening manner.

Reasonable use of force is hard to manage when you're in these situations, though.

[Tumbulu]

21. I think that it must be

[TigressDem]

23. He KNEW why he had to do it. So there were no regrets.

Of course, with hind sight he might have beat him a little less or subdued him.

Hard to say how much the guy fought back.

[Prairie Gates]

24. Literally no New York jury will convict him for this

It's probably right that it go to trial, but between Neeley's record and Penny's, you're never going to get 12 New Yorkers to put this guy in prison. Hopefully, they'll spare us additional expense if it goes to a hung jury.