This afternoon, jury deliberations in the case of Daniel Penny -- the New York man accused of killing violent subway harasser Jordan Neely -- began.
It is now up to the jury of his peers to determine his fate:
Jury begins deliberating in Daniel Penny’s lightning-rod NYC subway chokehold case — here’s what’s at stake https://t.co/kwkPRsUOn7 pic.twitter.com/bKonXZhv26
— New York Post (@nypost) December 3, 2024
The Manhattan jury weighing the criminal charges against Daniel Penny in the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely started deliberations in the lightning-rod case Tuesday.
The 12 jurors — seven women and five men — went off to huddle around 1:15 p.m. and are tasked with deciding whether to convict Penny of killing Neely, a troubled homeless man, on a crowded F train subway train in May 2023.
Over four weeks of testimony, the panel heard from more than 40 witnesses, including straphangers who witnessed Neely’s outburst on the crowded F train that day and Penny — a Marine veteran from Long Island — putting him in a chokehold and its aftermath.
If convicted, Penny faces anywhere from four to fifteen years behind bars.
The jury is not only going to decide what happens to Penny, but their decision will send reverberations throughout the criminal justice system. Especially in blue cities where George Soros-backed prosecutors decide who is and isn't a criminal.
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Penny did what I'd hope other men would do if I were being harassed by a violent criminal while in public: he intervened. And the question in this trial is not just Penny's guilt or innocence, it's about whether or not we have a right to defend ourselves from criminals who threaten our safety, or if we are meant to cower and rely on their mercy.
Neely was a career criminal. Yes, he had mental health issues and drug addiction. Those two circumstances do not absolve him of his actions, however (he's not Joe Biden's son, after all). He had a long rap sheet and the day he died had been demanding money from subway riders and threatening them.
Several of the straphangers on the subway that morning testified on behalf of Penny, and others defended Penny's action on police body cam video. A pathologist noted Neely had drugs in his system and testified Penny's chokehold is not what caused Neely's death.
Yet DA Alvin Bragg has decided the bad guy here is Daniel Penny. This is the same DA who let Ramon Rivera -- another mentally ill career criminal -- out of Rikers earlier this year. Rivera went on to kill three innocent people. Bragg also arrested bodega worker Jose Alba after Alba killed his attacker (who was also a career criminal -- see a pattern here?) and Alba was sent to Rikers until public outcry got the charges dropped. Bragg routinely reduces felony charges to misdemeanors and let pro-terror Columbia 'protesters' off the hook citing 'lack of evidence.'
Just like Neely's mental health issues and drug addiction don't absolve him of his criminal activities, they do not absolve Bragg and the soft-on-crime Democrat politicians of their gross negligence.
Men like Daniel Penny are forced to act because our government fails to protect us. In places like NYC, the government goes out of its way to make it very clear they will bend over backwards to accommodate, coddle, and cater to a handful of career criminals in the name of 'equity' and 'criminal justice reform.'
Today, the jury not only deliberates Daniel Penny's fate. It deliberates whether or not we still have a right to protect ourselves from those who seek to do us harm, as well as the politicians who enable them.
They should find Penny not guilty.
Here's hoping they do.
