The Marine Corps veteran who put a chokehold on a violent subway druggie has been found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide.
Daniel Penny had already on Friday been found not guilty of manslaughter. But the judge instructed the jury to deliberate the second count, which was criminally negligent homicide. The Monday verdict means he is not guilty in the eyes of the law.
The issue has electrified the nation, as some felt it was a racial issue. Penny is white and the perpetrator, Jordan Neely, was black.
Outside the courtroom, protesters shouted that there will be violence as a result of the verdict: “If we don’t get no justice, they don’t get no peace,” which some saw as a threat against jurors. As with George Floyd, who died in 2020 during an encounter with police, some have made Neely into a type of martyr, and painted Penny as a racist vigilante.
According to body cam footage from a New York Police officer, Neely had a pulse when medics and officers responded, but they didn’t give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation out of fears of contracting hepatitis from him, a known drug abuser.
