UNITED STATES: Criminal charges would be initiated against Daniel Penny, who used a deadly chokehold on Jordan Neely on board a New York City subway train, as told by Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday.
Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old US Marine Corps veteran, would encounter charges of second-degree murder that would bear a 15-year long jail term.
In order to be found guilty of second-degree manslaughter in New York, the jury should first ascertain that the accused engaged in irresponsible actions that put people at risk of death and then chose to intentionally blatantly ignore that risk.
This occurs two weeks following Penny pinning Jordan Neely, 30, to the subway’s floor and choke holding him for a long time. An independent journalist who was present during the tussle asserts that Neely, a black man, was screaming and imploring for money on the train even before the knockdown but had not physically hurt anyone.
When contacted for comment, Penny’s white lawyers did not do so straight away. In a previous statement, they tried to claim that their client, along with the other two riders, facilitated in trying to restrain.
In addition to two other riders who assisted in restraining Neely, Peeny’s attorney claimed that their client had acted in self-defence. Penny’s attorneys said in a statement mentioned, “Daniel never intended to harm Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death.”
The Manhattan district attorney mentioned in a statement, “We cannot provide any additional information until he has been arraigned in Manhattan criminal court, which we expect to take place tomorrow.”
Neely was suffering pangs of acute mental illness and homelessness for a long time, as per his friends. Neely was arrested a lot of times. He had accepted his crime, very recently, of assaulting a woman of 67 years in 2021 when she was exiting the subway station.
His death has caused a lot of debates in New York, with some left-leaning supporters claiming this was a clear example of a racist manoeuvre that bore a close resemblance to the 1984 four teenager shooting case carried out by Bernhard Goetz.
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