Daniel Penny jury breaks without verdict in NYC subway chokehold case
Jurors broke without reaching a verdict in Daniel Penny’s Manhattan manslaughter trial Wednesday after asking to revisit key testimony from the city doctor who performed Jordan Neely’s autopsy and video of the shocking encounter.
As deliberations entered a second day, the Manhattan jury asked to re-watch a six-minute clip shot by a Mexican journalist that showed the 26-year-old Marine veteran restraining Neely, a troubled homeless man, on the crowded F train subway train.
Jurors also sought a second look at the bodycam footage of NYPD officers arriving at the scene as EMS tried to revive a 30-year-old Neely, as well as video of Penny’s precinct interrogation interview with detectives in the wake of the fatal May 2023 encounter.
“I wasn’t trying to injure him. I’m just trying to keep him from hurting anybody else,” Penny had told two detectives during the videotaped interview shown to jurors, adding “that’s what we are taught in the Marine Corps.”
Later, the 12 jurors — seven women and five men — asked, too, to rehear a portion of the medical examiner’s testimony when she was cross-examined by defense lawyers as they questioned her determination that the chokehold killed Neely.
Dr. Cynthia Harris testified that “no toxicology result could have changed my opinion” — even if Neely had “enough fentanyl in his system to put down an elephant.”
Defense attorneys have maintained that Neely — whose outburst on the crowded train frightened straphangers — died from a mix of schizophrenia, drug use, a genetic condition and the struggle with Penny.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, argued Penny was “criminally reckless” and went “way too far” while holding Neely down.
Penny, who sat stone-faced in a navy blue suit inside the courtroom as the jury continued to weigh the charges through Wednesday, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
He faces up to 15 years behind bars if convicted of the top count. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has not said whether his office would seek jail time if Penny is found guilty.
Jurors began deliberating at around 1:15 p.m. on Tuesday after a four-week trial in which they heard from more than 40 witnesses.
