Ex-Marine who choked subway rider to death pleads not guilty

MANHATTAN (CN) — The ex-marine who killed a New York City subway passenger in May pleaded not guilty on Wednesday morning to counts of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old Marine veteran from Long Island, is charged with second-degree manslaughter for “recklessly” causing the May 1 death of Jordan Neely, an unhoused former Michael Jackson impersonator who was shouting and begging for money when Penny pinned him to the floor of the moving subway car with the help of two other passengers and held him in a chokehold for more than three minutes.

He wore a dark suit and red tie during his courtroom appearance before state judge Maxwell Wiley, which lasted mere minutes.

Penny was escorted to the 13th floor of the Manhattan criminal courthouse by several bodyguards and his attorneys, Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff.

The grand jury indictment was presented on Wednesday by assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass.

Penny faces a maximum of five to 15 years in prison if convicted of one count of second-degree manslaughter, and could also spend between 15 months and four years’ imprisonment on the criminally negligent homicide count.

Neely’s death on the F train — which was captured on video — and the city’s delay in bringing charges, stirred outrage and debates about the response to mental illness in the nation’s largest transit system.

Penny was initially arrested and arraigned last month on a criminal complaint, which does not require a grand jury’s vote, on the same pair of criminal charges.

Penny voluntarily surrendered to prosecutors one month ago, where he was arraigned in Manhattan criminal court. He was released free on a $100,000 partially secured bond without entering a plea on the counts.

Penny was similarly released on Wednesday morning on a $100,000 bond.

A grand jury indictment is issued after the district attorney’s office presents evidence before 23 jurors, who are convened to decide if there is enough evidence to bring the case to trial.

The vote is decided by a panel of at least 12 grand jurors who have heard the essential and critical evidence and also the legal instructions.

Authorities removed the body of 30-year-old Neely on May 1 from a train stopped in Lower Manhattan at Broadway-Lafayette, and the city’s medical examiner ruled his cause of death compression of the neck.

Four days later, Penny’s attorneys at Raiser & Kenniff asserted in a statement that Penny and other subway riders had “acted to protect themselves” in self-defense until help arrived after Neely began “aggressively threatening” Penny on the train.

A freelance journalist appeared to have started filming only after Penny had Neely in a headlock. The footage shows Neely occasionally twitching while a second passenger pinned Neely‘s arms and a third held down his shoulder.

Left-leaning advocates described the extrajudicial killing as an act of racist vigilantism, invoking comparisons to both Kyle Rittenhouse, acquitted in 2021 for killing two people and injured a third with an AR-15 during a chaotic protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin; and the infamous 1984 New York City subway shooting carried out by white gunman Bernhard Goetz against four Black teenagers.

Since surrendering himself to prosecutors last month, Penny has raised over $2.9 million from 58,000 donations to a GiveSendGo crowdfunding campaign for his legal expenses set up by his defense counsel.

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