[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]  

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg bowed to political pressure from his left-wing base when he charged Daniel Penny with second-degree manslaughter (i.e., reckless homicide) and criminally negligent homicide in the May 2023 death of Jordan Neely. Bragg lost the case after the jury of Mr. Penny’s peers acquitted the Marine veteran on the charge of negligent homicide. The jury’s verdict followed the judge’s dismissal of the more serious charge of manslaughter on which the jury had reported that it was deadlocked.

DA Bragg is notoriously soft when it comes to prosecuting truly dangerous criminals. Yet he decided to waste taxpayers’ money to persecute a hero who was simply trying to protect fellow subway riders who feared for their lives after Mr. Neely, acting like a raging lunatic, threatened them with lethal force. The terrified riders were trapped in the moving subway car with Neely, with no means of escape from the train. There were no police officers in sight.

Daniel Penny stepped in to protect himself and his fellow subway riders. He restrained Mr. Neely with a chokehold while Neely was fighting to free himself. Penny was justified in using the force that he deemed necessary to subdue Neely until the police arrived on the scene. And conflicting expert testimony at the trial cast reasonable doubt on whether the chokehold that Penny used was the proximate cause of Neely’s death, given the drugs found in his system and his serious health issues. In short, the jury used its common sense in reaching the correct verdict of not guilty.

One eyewitness to what happened that fateful day on the F train subway car in which she was riding testified at Mr. Penny’s trial that Jordan Neely was screaming, “I don’t give a damn. I will kill a motherf—-r. I’m ready to die.” Another witness said that Neely was lunging at people and “shouting in their faces.” Still another testified that he was “terrified” and that as Penny was trying to subdue Neely “it was very much a struggle.”

Daniel Penny was not looking for a confrontation. He was no vigilante on a mission to take the law into his own hands against suspected troublemakers. He acted instinctively, as a former Marine, to face imminent danger head-on and try to quell it rather than look the other way.

During an interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro on Fox News’ “The Five,” Mr. Penny said that he would endure a “million court appearances and the hatred and name-calling that comes with them” to keep even a single person from being harmed. “The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself.”

DA Bragg’s office tried to make this case about race. Its prosecutors, for example, referred at times during the trial to Mr. Penny as “the white man” and “the white defendant.” Yes, Mr. Neely was a black man, and Mr. Penny is a white man. But these men’s respective races had nothing to do with what happened when Neely was threatening all the subway riders, regardless of race, before Penny intervened. Moreover, it is worth noting that Penny was assisted in restraining Neely by non-white passengers.

Mr. Neely should never have been on the loose in the first place. A homeless drug user with very serious mental problems, Neely had a record of forty-two previous arrests, including for viciously assaulting subway riders.

In 2021, Neely assaulted a 67-year-old woman who suffered a broken nose, bone fracture, and other serious injuries. Nevertheless, despite his violent history, DA Bragg’s office allowed him to escape jail by pleading guilty to felony assault and agreeing to stay in a treatment facility and stay off drugs. All he had to do was to complete this program, and his felony assault would have been downgraded to a misdemeanor. But Neely decided instead to skip a compliance court date and leave the treatment facility.

At the time that Neely, who was then high on powerful drugs, boarded the F train on May 1, 2023 and accosted other passengers with threats of violence, Neely had an open arrest warrant against him.

Alvin Bragg’s policy of giving endless second chances to hardened criminals failed yet again. If Jordan Neely had been in jail or a mental institution where he belonged and confined for a long time, Neely would not have been free to continue his pattern of terrorizing subway riders on May 1, 2023. The ensuing confrontation between Neely and Penny would never have happened.

“I didn’t see a black man threatening passengers,” Mr. Penny said. “I saw a man threatening passengers, a lot of whom were people of color…I was scared for myself, but I looked around, I saw women and children. He was yelling in their faces…I couldn’t just sit still and let him carry out these threats.”

Fortunately, the unanimous jury, the majority of whom were female and which included four people of color – was not buying the snake oil that Bragg and his staff were selling.

The Heritage Foundation summed up perfectly the miscarriage of justice that Alvin Bragg tried to foist on Daniel Penny in this post on X: “Under Alvin Bragg, saving a train car full of innocent people is a crime. Daniel Penny is innocent, and a hero. In a city that desperately needs more like him, Alvin Bragg wants to make sure the next Daniel Penny doesn’t dare to help other victims.”

Not surprisingly, the usual race hustlers have come out of the woodwork. They are exploiting the death of a violence-prone, crazed drug addict who was menacing innocent people trapped in a subway car. The race hustlers are intent on fomenting further inter-racial division and tensions by painting the outcome in the Penny case as more evidence of alleged systemic racism and white supremacy in America.

Outgoing Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), for example, wrote that “White supremacy is not skin color. It’s a state of mind. Jordan Neely is the latest. He was sick. He was not a threat. He was subdued. Still not a threat. Daniel Penny choked him for 6 minutes. And killed him. We all watched it on camera, and he was still acquitted.”

Rep. Bowman has no first-hand knowledge of what transpired in the subway car that prompted Mr. Penny to act. But the passengers whom Mr. Neely terrorized sure do. This deranged individual, who has a history of violence, threatened them with imminent bodily harm, including most ominously shouting that “I will kill a motherf—-r.”

Penny saved the frightened passengers at risk to his own life

As Jamaal Bowman leaves Congress after losing in a Democrat primary earlier this year, this hatemongering Squad member should not let the door hit him on his way out.

The NAACP posted on X, “The acquittal of Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely has effectively given license for vigilante justice to be waged on the Black community without consequence. It’s a painful reminder of the inequities in our justice system. Jordan deserved compassion. Instead, he was met with violence.”

The criminal record of this dangerous recidivist tells quite a different story. District Attorney Bragg, leveraging New York’s laxity towards repeat criminals, tried his soft-on-crime brand of “compassion” with Jordan Neely, who refused to accept sustained treatment for his addiction. Instead, Mr. Neely returned to his violent ways. Neely was given plenty of chances to turn his life around with taxpayer-funded support. But he squandered them. Therefore, Neely “deserved” only long-term incarceration or confinement in a mental institution, not more misplaced “compassion.”

New York Black Lives Matter’s co-founder Hank Newsome took matters to a more dangerous level following the jury verdict. In court, he shouted out this threat to Mr. Penny: “It’s a small f**king world, buddy.”

Afterwards, while speaking outside the courthouse, Newsome exclaimed that “We need some Black vigilantes. People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us?”

Inciting violence is BLM’s calling card.

Jordan Neely’s father Andre Zachery cursed angrily in court after the verdict was read, prompting a court officer to remove him. Outside the courthouse, Mr. Zachery deplored his son’s death. “I just want to say I miss my son,” he said. “My son didn’t have to go through this. I didn’t have to go through this either. It hurts. It really, really hurts. I had enough of this, the system is rigged.”

Save us the crocodile tears. Zachery, who was absent for much of his son’s life, is now trying to cash in on his son’s death by filing a civil suit against Penny for unspecified damages. The complaint alleges that Penny’s purported negligent contact, assault and battery led to Neely’s demise.

This civil lawsuit has no more merit than DA Bragg’s failed criminal prosecution of Daniel Penny. Jordan Neely’s pattern of criminal violence, fueled by drugs, led to his own death, which Neely himself seemed prepared for when he told the passengers whom he terrorized: “I’m ready to die.”

Jordan Neely’s father abandoned him while he was alive and is now exploiting the tragedy of his son’s death to gain a monetary windfall. Pro-criminal District Attorney Alvin Bragg has abandoned law-abiding individuals in Manhattan in favor of coddling dangerous recidivist criminals like Jordan Neely.

Mr. Penny did what the police and justice system in New York City failed to do in this case. He came to the rescue of individuals he did not know who were trapped in a moving subway and threatened with bodily harm by a violent criminal who should have been locked up.

Daniel Penny is a hero who deserves praise and gratitude, certainly not the Left’s vicious character assassination.