A “not guilty” verdict has further fanned the flames of anger and outrage in New York.
On Dec. 9, Daniel Penny, a 26-year-old White Marine veteran, was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man who suffered from mental illness. Mr. Penny held Mr. Neely in a chokehold for nearly six minutes on a New York subway.
“It’s wrong,” Donte Mills, the attorney for the Neely family, said to The Final Call concerning the verdict.
He described the incident that took place on May 1, 2023, beginning with Jordan Neely getting on the train and making threats “because he was hungry” and “he felt unseen.”
“His words escalated, and people were afraid. And Daniel Penny decided to take action. We’re not challenging whether or not he should have taken action and even what his intentions were.
There’s no way for us to know that, but we do know that for him to continue to choke Jordan for six additional minutes after this was over, when everyone was telling him to let go,” Atty. Mills said. “It went too far, and he should have been held responsible for that, because you cannot choke the life out of someone, literally, and get away with it.”
Anger sparked after the verdict, as dozens protested the outcome in a Manhattan square later that day.
“I’m outraged, but there’s really no surprise to it,” activist Chivona Renee Newsome said to The Final Call. “There can be a six-minute-long video of a man dying on film, a man who never even saw death coming his way because he was never face to face with Daniel Penny.”
“We can see a video in detail. We can have every lab report you want, witnesses, police body cam footage, you name it, and a blonde-haired, blue-eyed White man will go free in America,” she said.
She and her brother, Hawk Newsome, both co-founders of Black Lives Matter Greater New York, attended the almost seven week duration of the trial. Mr. Newsome described some of what they saw in court:
Mr. Penny’s smile as first responders performed CPR and chest compressions on Mr. Neely; the several people who told Mr. Penny to stop; Mr. Penny’s lies to the police that he “let go immediately” and Mr. Penny describing Mr. Neely as a “crackhead.”
The more serious charge of second-degree manslaughter, which carried a 15-year maximum sentence, was dismissed on Dec. 6 after a deadlocked jury. The dismissal allowed the jury to move forward with the second charge of criminally negligent homicide, which carried a maximum of four years.
For Atty. Mills, the dismissal of the top charge paired with the “not guilty” verdict of the lesser charge doesn’t make sense. “It’s a lesser charge, because it goes from, he knew he would die to he should have known he would die,” Atty. Mills said.
“I don’t understand how the jury could not agree whether or not Daniel Penny knew Jordan would die, but then did agree, and said Daniel Penny was not guilty for a situation where he should have known that Jordan would die, because it’s a lower standard.
Something happened over the weekend. There were some people that were in that room fighting for Jordan that gave up the fight. And I can’t explain to you why they did that, but they did.”
Mr. Penny was a green belt in the Marine Corps martial arts program. His martial arts instructor, Joseph Caballer, testified that he learned several chokes designed to cut off blood flow to the brain and render someone unconscious, according to CNN.
“We’ve all witnessed a number of ways that Daniel Penny could have taken an unarmed, and I emphasize unarmed, Jordan Neely down. He could have put him in an armbar. He could have pushed him off the train. He could have put him in a submission hold. There were so many different options. Daniel Penny didn’t even use his words,” Mr. Newsome said.
The Newsome siblings described the early days of the trial when jury consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius helped select the jury. Ms. Dimitrius also assisted in jury selection for the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Mr. Rittenhouse was acquitted three years ago in the fatal shooting of two protesters in Wisconsin.
Hawk and Chivona Newsome sat during jury selection and said they witnessed potential Black jurors being eliminated for reasons such as unconventional hair, until the majority of the 12-person jury was White.
The verdict devastated the Neely family.
Atty. Mills shared some of the family’s history that left a young Jordan Neely in pain. Mr. Neely was in middle school when his mother was murdered, and he testified in the criminal trial against his mother’s boyfriend.
“Since that time, he had demons,” Atty. Mills said. But, he said, the Neely family is a loving family who loved and supported Mr. Neely. “He had the support there, but because of the demons he was battling, he would not accept that.
And a lot of us have family members that are fighting things and we offer love, and unfortunately, they’re not in a position to accept that love. But that does not make them a bad person, and it does not mean that their life has no value,” the attorney said. “It truly was a sad moment for the family, because even in death, they felt like Jordan was not heard.”
A few days before the dismissal and verdict, the family filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Penny. The wrongful death action says Mr. Penny killed Mr. Neely in a negligent manner and should be held responsible.
“Unfortunately, we won’t be able to send Daniel Penny to jail through our civil case, but we can hold him responsible,” Atty. Mills said. “We will get his deposition, and we will hear from him directly why he did not let Jordan’s neck go when he should have known that if he continued to choke him, that Jordan would die.”
He issued a call to action for Black people to take care of one another, rely on each other for peace and protection and to identify those in the Black community who may need food or a warm coat.
“If anything comes out of this verdict, it should be that we have to be there for each other. We have to protect each other. We have to care about the person that’s walking next to us in the street,” he said.
“I don’t want to have to fight this fight, because it means that one of our people have been wronged, and that’s the best way to prevent that from happening before we get to this point.”
Mr. Newsome also commented on the need for Black people to become protectors of their own communities.
“We need brothers to patrol our streets, brothers and sisters,” he said. “If you see a brother and sister in need, you have to intervene, because we have no protection other than ourselves.”
