A former United States Marine sergeant accused of fatally strangling a homeless man last month pleaded not guilty to charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in a court appearance on Wednesday.
Daniel Penny (24) was captured on video in a New York subway car putting Jordan Neely (30) in a chokehold from behind for several minutes on May 1st. The incident drew national attention and sparked protests by those angered by the police’s response, as it took more than a week for Penny, a white man, to be arrested for killing Neely, a black man.
In a brief arraignment lasting only a few minutes, Penny, wearing a blue suit and red tie, pleaded not guilty in criminal court in lower Manhattan. The former Marine was told to return to court on October 25th for a pretrial hearing.
Penny first appeared in the Manhattan Criminal Court on May 12th on a charge of second-degree manslaughter, a felony crime that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Judge Kevin McGrath released Penny on a $100,000 bond and ordered him to surrender his passport.
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After that hearing, a grand jury voted to indict Penny on June 14th.
In the minutes before he was killed, Neely, a former Michael Jackson impersonator who struggled with mental illness, had been shouting about how hungry he was and that he was willing to return to jail or die, according to passengers on the subway car.
Penny said he acted to defend himself and other passengers and did not intend to kill Neely. He has been hailed as a hero by prominent Republican politicians while protesters have decried him as a vigilante and described Neely’s death as a lynching.
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Witnesses said Neely did not physically threaten or attack anyone before Penny grabbed him. His killing renewed debate about gaps in the city’s systems for homeless and mentally ill New Yorkers.
Neely had been in and out of the city’s homeless shelters in recent years and his family say his mental health worsened dramatically after his mother was murdered when he was a teenager. He had been arrested many times, most recently for punching a 67-year-old woman in 2021, breaking bones in her face. – Reuters