OAN’s Abril Elfi
5:24 PM – Wednesday, January 17, 2024
A Manhattan judge has denied Marine veteran Daniel Penny’s motion to dismiss the charges against him in connection to the death of 30-year-old Jordan Neely.
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On Wednesday, Judge Maxwell Wiley rejected the motion to dismiss the charges against Penny in the subway chokehold death of Neely, a homeless man with 42 past arrests who was arrested most recently in 2021 for punching a 67-year-old woman in the face, breaking her bones.
Neely was reportedly a Michael Jackson impersonator whose other arrests involved three unprovoked assaults on women in the subway between 2019 and 2021.
Penny’s attorneys moved to have the manslaughter case dismissed by Judge Maxwell Wiley in October, citing problems with the prosecutors’ instructions to the grand jury and the medical examiner’s failure to prove Penny’s actions killed Neely, who had a history of drug abuse.
Neely passed away from “compression of the neck (chokehold),” according to Neely’s death certificate and the ME’s testimony. Wiley decided that this was sufficient evidence to “establish that defendant’s actions caused the death of Neely.”
Additionally, he wrote that the grand jury presentation “had been properly done,” according to the court’s review.
Penny is currently free on $100,000 bail, but if he is found guilty of Neely’s murder, he could spend up to 19 years in prison.
With a lengthy history of severe mental illness, Neely had been consistently threatening other subway riders that day until Penny noticed his actions and walked over behind him to apply the chokehold. The city’s medical examiner asserted that Penny’s chokehold ultimately killed Neely.
However, Penny maintained that he did not “mean to hurt anyone” and especially not kill Neely. He went on to say that he felt compelled to intervene on behalf of the other nearby subway riders when Neely started hurling trash while yelling that he was prepared to “kill a motherf—er,” “take a bullet,” and go to jail.
The next hearing in the case is set for March 20th and a trial will likely start in the fall.
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