The 24-year-old man facing a manslaughter charge for using a fatal chokehold to restrain another passenger on the New York City subway is set to be arraigned after he turned himself in to police Friday morning.
Manhattan prosecutors announced Thursday that Daniel Penny would face a manslaughter charge, which could send him to prison for 15 years, for the death of Jordan Neely.
At a Friday press conference, attorneys Donte Mills and Lennon Edwards said they were overjoyed that New York officials decided to arrest Penny, and they pushed for the charge to be escalated to second degree murder.
According to witnesses, Penny held Neely in a chokehold for almost 15 minutes, the lawyers said.
“He should have been arrested on the spot,” Edwards said.
Who was Jordan Neely? How did he die?
On May 1, Penny held 30-year-old Neely, a Black man experiencing homelessness, in a chokehold on the floor of a subway car following an altercation. In the proceeding days, police failed to release substantial details about what happened between the two men and other passengers.
Speaking Friday, Mills and Edwards said witnesses told them Neely may have defecated himself while on the floor of the subway car − which was stopped at an MTA station − a sign he was losing his life.
Neely was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital shortly after he was held in the chokehold for several minutes.
Since then, protesters have taken to the streets demanding justice for Neely, who had suffered from mental health problems since age 14, lawyer said. Penny, who is white, was questioned by police in the aftermath but was released without charges.
On Friday, Edwards said the Manhattan district attorney admitted to him he could not recall a single other instance in the past 25 years where a suspect in a death was released from custody after police secured a confession and video evidence, like in the case of Penny.
According to bystanders, Neely had been shouting on board the train, but had not physically assaulted anyone.
Friends of Neely said the former subway performer had been dealing with homelessness and mental illness in recent years. He had several arrests to his name, including the 2021 assault of a 67-year-old woman leaving a subway station.
Penny turns himself in
Penny, a U.S. Marine veteran, turned himself in to a Manhattan police station Friday morning ahead of being arraigned.
Thomas Kenniff, one of Penny’s attorneys, said Penny turned himself in “voluntarily.”
In a brief statement to reporters outside the police station, Kenniff said he expected an arraignment later Friday and that the process “will unfold from there.”
Penny’s attorneys have said he acted in self-defense when he restrained Neely.
What does a a second-degree manslaughter charge mean?
A second-degree manslaughter charge in New York will require the jury to find that a person has engaged in reckless conduct that creates an unjustifiable risk of death, and then consciously disregards that risk.
The law also requires that conduct to be a gross deviation from how a reasonable person would act in a similar situation.
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Contributing: Associated Press