MANHATTAN (CN) — Six weeks after Daniel Penny killed Jordan Neely with a chokehold on a New York City F train, a grand jury voted Wednesday to indict the former Marine.
Penny, a 24-year-old Marine veteran from Long Island, faces a maximum of five to 15 years in prison if convicted of one count of second-degree manslaughter.
Multiple spokespeople for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office declined to confirm news reporting citing law enforcement sources that the grand jury had to returned a vote to indict.
Penny's defense lawyers pledged Wednesday evening to "aggressively defend" him against the new charges.
"While we respect the decision of the grand jury to move this case forward to trial, it should be noted that the standard of proof in a grand jury is very low and there has been no finding of wrongdoing," attorney Steven Raiser said. "We’re confident that when a trial jury is tasked with weighing the evidence, they will find Daniel Penny’s actions on that train were fully justified."
Penny voluntarily surrendered to prosecutors one month ago, where he was arraigned in Manhattan criminal court on a criminal complaint, which does not require a grand jury's vote, for one count each of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter for Neely’s death. He was released free on a $100,000 partially secured bond without entering a plea on the counts.
A grand jury indictment is issued after the District Attorney’s Office presents evidence before 23 jurors convened to decide if the evidence is sufficient 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.
Attorneys for Neely's family, Donte Mills and Lennon Edwards, said Penny should be charged with murder not manslaughter.
Penny, who is white, has said in interviews he was protecting himself and other passengers from Neely, who is Black.
The veteran maintains he was attempting to restrain Neely and "never intended to harm" him by holding him in the fatal rear chokehold.
Authorities removed the body of the 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.
Footage released by a freelance journalist on the train begins only after Penny had Neely in a headlock. It shows Neely occasionally twitching, as a second passenger pins Neely's arms while a third person holds down his shoulder.
The video of Neely's killing, and the subsequent suspense before the government brought charges, stirred outrage and debates about the response to mental illness in the nation’s largest transit system.
Since surrendering himself to prosecutors last month, Penny has raised over $2.8 million from a GiveSendGo crowdfunding campaign for his legal expenses set up by his defense counsel and supported by 57,000 donations.
His attorney Kenniff is a former prosecutor, judge advocate general and Iraq war veteran.
In 2021, Kenniff ran against current Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a Republican nominee on a platform largely opposed to the criminal-justice reforms pushed by progressive Democrats in Albany in 2019.
Penny's bail was handled by prominent New York bail bondsman Ira Judelson, whose previous high-profile clients have included rappers DMX and Ja Rule, former head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn, comedian Katt Williams, and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
Left-leaning advocates described the extrajudicial killing as an act of racist vigilantism, invoking comparisons to both Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted in 2021 for killing two people and injured a third with an AR-15 during a chaotic Kenosha, Wisconsin, protest; and the infamous New York City subway shooting carried out by white gunman Bernhard Goetz against four Black teenagers in 1984.
Before his death, Neely was a fixture in the Times Square transit hub, known for his precise Michael Jackson impression. Friends of Neely said he had struggled in recent years with homelessness and deteriorating mental illness.
Among multiple arrests, Neely had recently pleaded guilty to assaulting a 67-year-old woman in 2021 as she left a subway station. After pleading guilty, he missed a court date, leading to a warrant for his arrest that was still active at the time of his death. His death has divided some in New York and beyond, triggering intense debates and protests.
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