Protesters jeer at Daniel Penny on first day of jury selection in fatal NYC subway chokehold case: ‘Murderer!’
Daniel Penny, the former Marine charged with fatally choking homeless subway busker Jordan Neely on a crowded Manhattan train car, stood and waved Monday to the first batch of jurors that could decide his fate — as protestors jeered at him on his way i🌳nto court.
“Murderer! Murderer!” one man shouted into a bullhorn as Penny, 25, walked into Manhattan Supreme Court for the first day of jury selection at his trial, where he’s charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
About 50 demonstrators — including some holding signs that read “Justice for Jordan Neely: End Racist Vigilantism Now!” — rallied outside the Centre Street courthouse before Penny arrived.
Once inside, Pe🅰nny, wearing a blue su♌it and maroon tie, stood at the defense table, turned and waved to the first pool of prospective jurors sworn in Monday morning after Justice Maxwell Wiley asked him to introduce himself.
“Good morning,” he said softly.
When Wiley asked the first pool of 86 potential jurors who among t💟hem had heard of the lightning-rod case, nearly all of the hands shot up𝐆.
“Almost everybody. Not a surprise,” the judge said.
“Even if you have formed an opinion about it, that does not disqualify you from serving on this case,” he added. “If you have formed an opinion on this case, you have to be prepared to change it.”
Wiley thওen asked if they felt they had the time to serve in a trial expected to last up to six weeks, and by the midday lunch bre👍ak, 58 prospective panelists had been excused.
Twenty-eight others were sent home for the day but told to return Friday morning for what’s expected to be the start of the second stage of the process: voir dire, or juror questioning.
In the afternoon session, 𒊎17 more prospective jurors were told to return Friday, while 35 more were excused. That means that by the end of the day Monday, 45 prospective jurors had made it𒉰 past the first phase of screening, expected to resume on Tuesday morning.
Prospective jurors are eventually expected to be grilled about thei🦂r own experiences riding city subways — before 12 Manhattanites are ultimately chosen to decide whether to convict Penny of crimes that 🌱together carry a max sentence of 19 years.
The May 1, 2023 tragedy sparked a firestorm over whether Penny’s actions were justified when he confronted 30-year-old Neely — who some witnesses say had been ranting in a🌜n “insanely threatening” way ﷺ— on a northbound F train as it neared the Broadway-Lafayette platform just after 2 p.m.
Penny was cut loose by police on the night of Neely’s death, but was arrested two weeks later after cellphone video of the fatal chokehold surfaced online and drew outrage.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’🉐s office has accused Penny of “recklessly” causing Neely’s death by choking him for more than six minutes — well past the point where Neely had stopped “purposeful movement.”
The chokehold also continued after the subway car’s doors had opened, allowing te𒈔rrified passengers toℱ flee the scene, and after two more men began restraining Neely as well, prosecutors say.
Penny’s lawyers have argued that he is being “persecuted” for what they say was him protecting his fellow straphangers from a raving Ne𒊎ely, who had yelled at some point, “someone is going to die today!”
But Neely was unarmed♑ at the time — cಌarrying just a muffin in his pocket, video of the scene shows — and other witnesses reported not feeling like he truly planned to hurt anyone.
“For me, it was like another dꦯay typically in New York,” one bystander t💟old the grand jury.
Penny has pleaded not guilty.
Witnesses are set to include the♓ detectives who interrogated Penny on the night of Neꦉely’s death, and bystanders who were🔯 on💜 the subway at the time.
It’s not yet clear whethe🌊r Penny, who is out on $100,000 bail, will testify in his own defense.
Penny’s lead attorney, Thomas Kenniff, ran against Ma𝓡nhattan DA Bragg as a Republican in the November 2021 election. Bragg, a Democrat, won with 83% of the vote.
The protestors outside court Monday included Neely’s uncle, Christopher Neely, and Shellyne Rodriguez, who was fired from her job as an adjunct professor at Hunter College and the School of Visual Arts after she was caught on video threatening a Post reporter with a machete as he questioned her in May 2023.
