On Monday, a Manhattan jury acquitted Daniel Penny, the 26-year-old white man who choked Jordan Neely, a homeless, unarmed Black man, to death on the subway in May 2023. Penny initially faced charges of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter, but the manslaughter charge was dropped by prosecutors on Friday, due to a deadlocked jury. A manslaughter charge requires proof the defendant recklessly caused another person’s death, while criminally negligent homicide charges relate to serious, “blameworthy conduct,” the Associated Press notes.
The trial caps off a horrific tragedy that quickly became a flashpoint in right-wing culture wars and panics about urban crime. But if anything, we’re all clearly far less safe in a society where individuals effectively have legal permission to choke to death anyone who makes them uncomfortable in public.
On May 1, 2023, video shows that, inside a subway car, Neely shouted about being hungry and thirsty, and that he didn’t care if he died or went to jail. Penny then came up from behind Neely and put him in a chokehold. Penny sustained the chokehold for about six minutes, even when it was clear that Neely was dying, and even when the subway doors opened and passengers could safely exit. “He’s dying. Let him go!” an unseen bystander said in the background of one video captured by another passenger.
Some passengers testified that Neely made them feel nervous and unsafe. Some recounted that he didn’t approach any of them. Still, Penny told detectives he was trying to “put [Neely] out,” and that he was “just trying to keep him from hurting anyone else” and “de-escalate” the situation. His defense — and the bloodthirsty, right-wing culture warriors who have since valorized him — insisted Penny is a hero and upstanding citizen who kept his fellow riders safe. Penny’s attorneys also argued that it wasn’t even the chokehold that killed Neely, but Neely’s schizophrenia medication. Medical records from the trial show Neely used the synthetic cannabinoid K2 and told doctors that he found it could negatively affect his thinking and behavior.
Additional medical records reviewed during the trial showed that after being hospitalized for depression at 14, Neely was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He told a doctor in 2017 that his experiences with homelessness and poverty, including being forced to “dig through the garbage” for food, caused him to feel so hopeless he considered suicide. Shortly after Neely’s death, reporting came to light about his years-long struggles in the foster system, how he often gave his own money earned from street dancing to fellow foster kids for food and clothes, and how he struggled after losing his mother, whose boyfriend was convicted of murdering her.
Jordan Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, addresses reporters outside court after Daniel Penny was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide for choking his son on the subway in 2023
“It hurts. It really, really hurts. What are we gonna do, people? What’s gonna happen to us now?”
— Molly Crane-Newman (@mollycranenewman.bsky.social) December 9, 2024 at 12:41 PM
Few outlets have reported on Neely’s story, instead extensively platforming Penny to whitewash his actions and tout his record as a veteran. After Neely's death, Penny told the New York Post he is “not a white supremacist” and his actions had “nothing to do with race.” The suggestion that he discriminated against Neely, he said, was “a little bit comical”: “Everybody who’s ever met me can tell you, I love all people, I love all cultures. You can tell by my past and all my travels and adventures around the world. I was actually planning a road trip through Africa before this happened.” (Famously, racists have never gone to nonwhite countries!) A legal defense fund for Penny raised over $2 million within days of his arrest, with significant boosts from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Kid Rock.
At a press conference outside the Manhattan courthouse after the verdict, Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, told reporters, “It hurts. It really, really hurts. What are we gonna do, people? What’s gonna happen to us now? The system is rigged.” Zachery filed a civil wrongful death lawsuit against Penny that remains ongoing. "I just want to say, I miss my son. My son didn't have to go through this. I didn't have to go through this either. It hurts, really, really hurts.”
In the immediate aftermath of Neely’s death, Penny issued a chilling statement that performatively offered condolences to Neely’s family. The statement suggested Neely had merely died of mental health issues, rather than from Penny physically depriving him of air. Predictably, it did not include an apology. “I’m deeply saddened by the loss of life. It’s tragic what happened to him. Hopefully, we can change the system that’s so desperately failed us,” Penny told the Post last year. Asked if he believed he had anything to be ashamed of, Penny said, “I don’t, I mean, I always do what I think is right.”
Throughout the trial, protests both against Penny and in support of him took place outside the courthouse, with some regarding him as a vigilante hero and others pointing out that he'd singled out and killed a homeless Black man experiencing a mental health crisis.
Over the last year, the right has frequently invoked the events leading up to Neely’s death to inflame panics about public safety, all while deliberately ignoring the cruel policies and conditions that condemned Neely to homelessness and starvation. If anything, Penny’s acquittal presents a public safety threat by suggesting that you can kill anyone for daring to expose you to their suffering in a public place. The classist systems of violence that killed Jordan Neely present the greatest threat to our collective safety.
