Closing Arguments Made in Trial of Daniel Penny, Accused in NY Subway Death

The defense argued Penny could not have known of Neely’s medical condition. Prosecutors said Penny’s use of force went beyond what the law allows.

Daniel Penny, who is charged in the death of Jordan Neely, walks into the courthouse with members of his legal team as closing arguments begin in his trial in New York on Dec. 2, 2024. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

NEW YORK CITY—Lawyers in the Daniel Penny trial made their closing arguments on Dec. 2, hoping to sway the jury on whether Penny is guilty of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for the death of Jordan Neely on May 1, 2023, on a New York subway train.

The defense relied on testimony from Dr. Satish Chundru, and even portions of testimony from one of the prosecution witnesses, medical examiner Dr. Cynthis Harris, to make its case that Neely died from sickle cell crisis, not from strangulation.

Criminal defense lawyer Steve Raiser repeatedly told the jury that there was no way that Penny could have known that Neely, a total stranger, had any unusual medical condition and that Penny acted to protect other passengers on the uptown F train.

The defense’s characterization of Neely as aggressive and explicitly threatening when he stepped onto the F train that day went uncontested by government lawyers. In fact, Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran openly admitted that Neely’s conduct terrified passengers on the train, far surpassing any disturbing experiences they might have had on the subway before.

But Yoran spent a great deal of time explaining when it is justifiable under New York law to use deadly force and insisted that Penny’s actions went far beyond what the law allowed.

Attendance in the courthouse at 100 Centre Street was much greater than on past days of the trial, with reporters queuing for hours to be readmitted to the courtroom after lunch.

A High Bar

According to Raiser, any attempt to prosecute Penny for having choked Neely to death placed a heavy burden of evidence on the prosecutors. They could not simply say that video footage of part of the incident appeared to capture one person choking another to death, especially given all the counterevidence that Chundru had offered on the stand.

Chundru had testified under oath that Neely died because, during the stress of the incident, his sickle cell traits escalated into a full-blown sickle cell crisis, which was evident throughout much of his body on postmortem examination.

Raiser presented excerpts from prosecutors’ opening arguments on a screen in the courtroom as he spoke to the jury, prompting frequent objections from Yoran, which the judge overruled.

“In their opening statement, [prosecutors] made it very clear that they were talking about a chokehold death, not sickling that’s related to a chokehold, or some kind of gray area in between,” said Raiser.

“They have to show a chokehold death that has nothing to do with sickling, that’s what that statement says,” he said.

Raiser contradicted the government’s position that while Neely might have had a sickle cell trait, the condition was “largely benign.”

“Well, I have to disagree with that, because when Mr. Neely had a massive sickling crisis, his condition was no longer benign,” Raiser said.

It was at this point that Raiser cited Harris’s testimony, pointing out that Harris—called to the stand as a prosecution witness—had admitted to him under cross-examination that it was possible that at the 3:09-minute mark of a cellphone video of the incident, Neely may not have been just unconscious but dying from sickle-cell crisis.

Harris “flat-out admitted” that the sickling the postmortem examination revealed may have killed Neely, said Raiser.

This was more than enough to foster reasonable doubt about the government’s argument as to the cause of Neely’s death, he said.

He reiterated that Penny had taken actions to protect passengers and had no way of knowing about, or preventing, a medical condition in the man he gripped and held for the police.

“There is no possible scenario where Danny knew that Mr. Neely was going to enter into a sickle cell crisis and die,” he said.

He reminded the jury of portions of Chundru’s testimony that stressed the dangerous combination of the powerful intoxicant K2 and a schizophrenic condition acting upon Neely.

In closing, Raiser reminded the jury that witnesses who had little or nothing to gain from coming to testify in court had praised Penny’s actions and said they were grateful for what he did.

“The government is scapegoating a young man who was brave enough to stand up the very moment he was needed,” Raiser said.

The Government’s Case

Yoran pointed out what she claimed were discrepancies in witness accounts of what happened on the F train that day, noting that the statements attributed to Neely varied depending on who was testifying.

By some accounts, Neely said he did not care if he died. By others, Neely actually encouraged passengers to take his life. And still other accounts said that Neely explicitly threatened to kill people on the train.

Regardless of what Neely said, the law is very clear about where and when the use of deadly force is permissible, Yoran argued.

Maintaining a legal system in which deadly force is excusable only when it is “absolutely necessary” is critical, “so that we can preserve life, even the life of an offender,” Yoran said.

Citing testimony from Joseph Caballer, who had served with Penny in the Marines, Yoran said that the chokehold is taught in the Marines as a “nonlethal maneuver” and that its proper use would not have resulted in a death.

“The idea is that you very strategically use your arms to press on the veins and arteries on both sides and the front of the neck, to stop blood from going into and out of the brain. The person then loses consciousness after about 15 to 20 seconds, and you let them go immediately,” she said.

But Penny kept Neely in a chokehold while prone on the floor for about six minutes, Yoran stated.

It did not seem to concern Penny that Neely did not have a weapon in hand, she argued. Returning to the definition of justifiable deadly force, Yoran said that one must have a reasonable belief that the individual perceived as dangerous has a weapon and is ready to use it. The theoretical possibility that the person may have a weapon hidden away somewhere falls flat, she said.

Neely did not have any weapons on him, and Penny never claimed to have seen one.

“And so, even if he had been justified in using deadly physical force when he first took Mr. Neely down, he would no longer be permitted to use deadly physical force to keep Mr. Neely down for the police,” Yoran said.

The arguments summarized weeks of hotly contested testimony from both defense and government witnesses. The jury is expected to begin deliberations tomorrow after the prosecution wraps up its closing arguments.