The Daniel Penny trial is not just about New York. It is a litmus test for the future of American justice.
On the 13th floor of Manhattan Supreme Court, 26-year-old Penny, a Marine veteran, is charged with manslaughter in the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless black man who had threatened passengers on a crowded subway. in May 2023.
Penny, who is white, faces 20 years in prison.
This case reflects so much of what plagues America: a soft-on-crime policy that causes the average citizen to fear for their safety; the far left’s insistence that it is compassionate to leave homeless, drug-addicted and mentally ill people on the streets; and the unyielding falsehood that this nation runs on white supremacy — ergo, Daniel Penny’s actions that day embody nothing less than white America’s belief that black lives don’t matter.
All brought to us by lousy District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat who has reduced violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, and who somehow oversaw President Donald Trump’s hush money payments to a porn star worthy of prosecution.
Bragg racialized the criminal justice system in New York—a city like no other, where people of every conceivable race, creed, color, and socioeconomic class interact with each other on a daily basis. Like they did in that same subway car. It’s a multiracial witness list, and there’s no doubt that Jordan Neely scared commuters who thought they’d seen it all.
The Daniel Penny trial is not just about New York. It is a litmus test for the future of American justice.
Penny, 26, a Marine veteran, is charged with manslaughter in the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless black man who threatened passengers on a crowded subway train in May 2023.
Juan Alberto Vasquez, a 59-year-old reporter from Mexico, said he went into “alert mode” as soon as Neely boarded the train. He told police that Neely reminded him of Frank James, the man who randomly shot 10 commuters on a Brooklyn subway in 2022.
Moriela Sanchez, a teenager from Harlem, told a grand jury that she did not believe Penny was “lynching” Neely, as the left would have us believe.
An important part of that testimony:
Question: “Did it seem to you that the white man was squeezing the black man’s neck?”
Sánchez: ‘No. He was trying to protect other people so (Neely) wouldn’t lay hands on anyone.”
Neely had a long history of attacking strangers on the street and on the subway, including breaking the nose and eye socket of a 68-year-old woman.
In fact, Neely had more arrests than birthdays: 44 at age 30, including for indecent exposure.
He was on the ‘Top 50’ list of homeless people in urgent need of help and was arrested in 2015 for attempting to kidnap a seven-year-old girl. Neely was reportedly seen dragging the child down a street.
But you won’t see any mention of that in most coverage of this trial — because in Bragg’s worldview and that of the left-wing media, Neely was just an occasional Michael Jackson street performer who fell through the cracks.
In January, New York magazine published a soft-focus cover story headlined: “Finding Jordan Neely.”
It was a love letter to an urban menace, with writer Lisa Miller musing that Neely’s threats to terrified passengers that day “may have been a plea to be back in a place where meals and medicine were provided, perhaps a sign of his exhaustion or fear.” perhaps an admission of defeat’.
Or perhaps a prelude to harming people, as Neely had done many times before.
Naturally, Al Sharpton, the original New York City race baiter, praised Neely.
“We can’t live in a city,” Sharpton said, “where you can strangle me to death without provocation, without a weapon, without a threat.”
This case reflects so much of what plagues America: a soft-on-crime policy that causes the average citizen to fear for their safety; the far left’s insistence that it is compassionate to leave homeless, drug-addicted and mentally ill people on the streets; and the unforgiving lie that this nation is founded on white supremacy.
To be clear, no one deserves to die the way Neely did.
But New Yorkers cannot live in a city where police are scarce, or afraid to intervene for fear that they too will be charged with hate crimes, or where the elderly, children and women are raped, assaulted and abused. murdered in broad daylight — as 23-year-old Leslie Torres was apparently strangled outside a Times Square hotel at 1:30 p.m. last month.
But for Sharpton and compatriot Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who placed herself front row at Neely’s funeral, violent crimes are so often judged solely by race.
“Jordan Neely has been murdered,” AOC posted on X two days after his death. “The killer is being protected (with) passive headlines (and) without charges. It’s disgusting.’
What’s disgusting is spoiled politicians who stoke racial animosity and call Penny a murderer before he was ever arrested or charged.
Even Mayor Eric Adams, himself a former police officer, suggested that Penny would likely not be charged with a crime.
“Any loss of life is tragic,” Adams said in the immediate aftermath. “However, we know there are serious mental health issues at play here.”
As do drug problems and, according to Neely’s aunt, a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The autopsy revealed that Neely was high on K2, a powerful synthetic cannabinoid that can cause paranoia, hallucinations and cardiac arrest.
The New York City medical examiner has declined to say how much K2 was in Neely’s system at the time of death. Seems relevant to me.
Unless the prosecution hides a shred of evidence – we’re in week four of a likely six-week trial – Daniel Penny should be found not guilty.
Witness statements support this so far.
The basic facts: On Monday, May 1, 2023, after 2 p.m., Neely boarded a northbound F train at the heavily trafficked Second Avenue station.
Alethea Gittings, a retired medical administrator and daily subway rider from Brooklyn, was in the same car.
She testified that as far as she could remember, Neely started yelling, “I don’t care. I’ll kill a motherfucker…I’m ready to die.”
She described his tone as “very loud, very threatening, very disturbing,” and said she was “scared of it.”
Neely had more arrests than birthdays: 44 at age 30, including for indecent exposure. He was on the ‘Top 50’ list of homeless people in urgent need of help and was arrested in 2015 for attempting to kidnap a seven-year-old girl.
But you won’t see any mention of that in most coverage of this trial – because in the left-wing media worldview, Neely was just an occasional Michael Jackson street performer who fell through the cracks.
Caedryn Schrunk, senior brand manager at Nike, was also in the subway. She testified that as a daily subway traveler, she had never been so scared.
“Everyone was frozen,” she said. ‘I was really scared, that was the moment I was going to die.’
Schrunk testified that Neely approached a mother who was protecting her child with a stroller. Neely’s odor, she said, “took over the subway… His sweatpants were visibly dirty.”
She suspected he was having a nervous breakdown and was probably on drugs. “I’ve never seen a human being in that condition,” she added.
That’s when Penny allegedly took Neely down and put him in a chokehold. Two other civilians, one a black man, helped hold Neely on the ground until police arrived.
NYPD Sergeant Carl Johnson was one of the first on the scene. He testified that neither he nor any of his officers performed CPR on Neely — not because the NYPD is racist, but because Neely was so clearly dirty and possibly sick.
“He was apparently a drug user,” Johnson said of Neely. ‘He was very dirty. I didn’t want (my officers) to get hepatitis. If (Neely) woke up, he would have thrown up. I didn’t want my officers to do that.”
Bodycam video shown in court revealed Neely still had a pulse when first responders arrived. Penny stayed on site the entire time.
Alethea Gittings testified that she “came back to thank Mr. Penny for what he had done.”
The fear of a potentially deadly attack is one that every woman in the increasingly lawless New York City can relate to. As Lauri Sitro, the mother of the five-year-old boy, testified, “I was afraid for my son. It’s not like you can run to the next train with a five-year-old. I felt very relieved when Daniel Penny stopped (Neely).”
Yet the prosecution runs on the race card.
“I’m not a white supremacist,” Penny told the New York Post last year. “This had nothing to do with race.”
Will a jury see it that way? If there is one thing that Trump’s election portends, it is that ordinary Americans reject the idea that everything in this country should be reduced to race. We are exhausted by the idea that white people are inherently evil and bigoted.
The Daniel Penny trial appears to be pursuing a case, not a crime. And that cause perpetuates the myth of a persistently racist America.