Marine veteran Daniel Penny will go on trial in October for the death of a mentally ill homeless man who was fatally strangled on a New York subway last May.
The 25-year-old appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday, dressed in a navy suit, white shirt and burgundy tie, where he is charged with the involuntary manslaughter of Jordan Neely.
Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley set a trial date for October 8 and a suppression hearing for September 17.
Penny has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers had already tried to obtain a dismissal, claiming that he “intervened to save lives”, but their request was rejected in January.
He was 24 at the time of the incident and was filmed strangling Neely and holding him down until he lost consciousness.
Neely was pronounced dead at the scene and the medical examiner later ruled it a homicide, saying his neck injuries proved strangulation was the cause.
Daniel Penny appears in court Wednesday morning. His trial date has been set for October 8
Marine veteran Daniel Penny appeared in a Manhattan court Wednesday where the judge set a trial date for Oct. 8 in the strangulation death of Jordan Neely.
Penny, 25, is charged in the death of Jordan Neely, a mentally ill homeless man who he strangled on a New York train last May.
Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, was in court and looked emotional as the trial date in his son’s death was announced.
Lennon Edwards, attorney for Neely’s family, said, “The family of Andre Zachery and Jordan Neely is still hurting. They are still suffering.
“Justice has not yet been served, but we remain confident that justice will be served in this case.
“We want to remind you that when Jordan was on the train that day, he was unarmed. He had no gun, no knife, he was hungry. He asked for food.
“In his despair he was emotional, but distressed does not mean dangerous and so we ask you to keep an open mind and remember the pain this family is suffering.”
The lawyer said he hoped the trial would allow people to see “what Daniel Penny was really like that day.”
“He was the one who was dangerous and we are confident that the prosecutor will be able to bring justice on behalf of Jordan Neely’s family,” he added.
“On that day, Daniel Penny was judge, jury and executioner and we hope that when this trial begins, he will face a judge, a jury and a sentence.”
Neely’s death sparked national outrage and many compared it to that of George Floyd. His family enlisted the help of civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump.
But Penny’s defense attorneys say bystanders feared for their lives because of Neely’s allegedly threatening behavior and the ex-Marine stepped in to protect them.
Others say the incident crystallized New York’s crime crisis and speaks to many residents’ fear of the mentally ill roaming the subways.
Last year, Penny’s attorneys filed a motion with the judge in October seeking dismissal of the charges.
They cited a witness on the train who described Neely’s threats as “absolutely traumatic” and beyond anything he had experienced in six years on the subway. Penny’s lawyers called Neely “incredibly threatening.”
In the years before his death, Neely’s mental health had deteriorated and the New York Police Department had issued a warrant for his arrest for hitting an elderly woman on the subway. He was also accused of pushing a woman onto the train tracks.
Witnesses at the time of the incident said Neely was screaming that he was going to kill someone and didn’t care about going to jail.
Penny held Neely in a chokehold on the floor of the subway car while others helped her on May 1.
Neely had been in and out of the city’s homeless shelters in recent years, and his family says his mental health deteriorated significantly after his mother was murdered when he was a teenager.
Marine veteran Daniel Penny’s attorney, Thomas Kenniff, asked the judge to dismiss the case in October, but that request was denied.
Penny’s lawyers asked the judge to dismiss the case in October, questioning the medical examiner’s findings and pointing to the fact that Neely had synthetic drugs in her system that could have contributed to her death.
But Judge Wiley denied their request in January, saying he was satisfied with the medical examiner’s findings.
Thomas Kenniff, a lawyer representing Penny, praised Brooklyn prosecutors for not filing charges against a man who shot an aggressive passenger on the subway last Thursday.
“If you approach things in a different way, like in the video we just saw, you don’t know if they have guns or knives and the situation can evolve,” he told Fox News.
“Is there a cruel irony in the fact that my client, who did everything right, is being charged, while others, who rightly so, are not? Yeah, you could say so.