1 year ago
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The US Marine veteran who was recorded placing Jordan Neely in a chokehold on the New York City subway before the Michael Jackson impersonator died on Monday could face a manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide charge, an expert told the Guardian on Friday.
A source with knowledge of the case first confirmed the marine veteran’s identity as 24-year-old Daniel Penny of West Islip, Long Island. Attorneys for Penny later provided his name to news outlets after it was widely circulated late on Thursday by social media users, citing information from people who recognized him in cellphone video footage of Neely’s final moments.
Penny has not been charged with a crime. His attorneys asserted in a statement late Friday that Neely had been “aggressively threatening” Penny and other passengers when their client and his fellow riders “acted to protect themselves”.
“Daniel never intended to harm Mr Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death,” said the statement from the attorneys, Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff.
Neely’s killing happened on Monday afternoon. He was on a train yelling that he was hungry and ready to die when a four-minute video captured by a freelance journalist showed other riders pinning Neely down and Penny putting him in a chokehold.
Police arrived to find Neely unconscious, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Investigators determined he died from having his neck compressed, and his death was ruled a homicide.
Officers detained Penny, questioned him, but released him without booking him with a crime. That decision has prompted protests at subway stations and on New York City streets against officers, prosecutors and the mayor, Eric Adams, with demonstrators calling Neely’s death vigilantism by a white man against a Black subway passenger and talented dancer who was experiencing homelessness as well as mental health struggles after his mother’s murder when he was a teenager.
In an interview Friday, Joseph Giacalone, a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College, said the possibility of criminal charges against the man identified as Penny could come down to authorities’ determining whether keeping Neely in a chokehold for several minutes went “too far”.
“You cut off someone’s oxygen supply for that long, and you could cause serious injury or death,” said Giacalone, a retired New York police detective sergeant.
While New York law allows people to use deadly force if they reasonably believe that they are faced with an imminent, mortal threat, Giacalone said mentally ill people uttering remarks like those from Neely, 30, is a daily occurrence on the subway that most often does not lead to deadly encounters.
And Giacalone said he believed the contents of the video showing Neely in the chokehold could merit consideration of a manslaughter or negligent homicide charge.
Manslaughter and negligent homicide are both unintentional killings that are still illegal. But they are less serious charges than murder, which is an intentional and unjustified killing.
Giacalone said, in his opinion, Neely’s death also exposed the city’s inability to provide adequate social and mental health services. Each of more than 40 previous times that police said they had arrested Neely were opportunities to “get him the help he needed”, but city officials squandered those chances, according to Giacalone.
“This whole situation is awful in so many aspects,” Giacalone said.
Military officials on Friday released a statement saying Penny served in the marines for four years beginning in 2017. He attained the rank of sergeant as well as the occupational specialty of rifleman and was last assigned to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
The statement noted that Penny received various medals during his time with the marines.
One of Penny’s attorneys, Kenniff – an Iraq war veteran – ran unsuccessfully against Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, speaking out against bail reform laws that the election victor supported.
Citing a source, the television news outlet WABC reported on Friday that a grand jury could determine as soon as next week whether criminal charges should be handed up in Neely’s death.
Neely’s father, Andre Zachary, told the New York Daily News he hopes Penny is indicted.
“I just want something to be done,” Zachary said. “Something has to be done.”
In their statement, Penny’s attorneys expressed condolences to Neely’s loved ones while also describing him as having “a history of violent and erratic behavior”.
“For too long, those suffering from mental illness have been treated with indifference,” the statement from Raiser and Kenniff said. “We hope that out of this awful tragedy will come a new commitment by our elected officials to address the mental health crisis on our streets and subways.”
English (US)