Reactions to Daniel Perry’s acquittal Monday in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely aboard an F train last year were sharply divided, with some calling the former Marine a hero who intervened to save fearful straphangers and others saying he was a vigilante who killed a vulnerable Black man in the throes of a mental health crisis.
During the trial, prosecutors said Penny perhaps initially acted with good intent, but that he crossed the line by holding Neely in a chokehold for far too long. Penny’s lawyers, on the other hand, portrayed him as a good Samaritan being unfairly punished for trying to help fellow passengers through a frightening moment when the homeless man entered the train in what several said was a threatening manner.
“There’s a desire of New Yorkers to always respond when they believe it’s necessary, and I don’t believe that’s going to change in any way,” Mayor Adams said at his weekly press briefing Monday. “This is not the first time and I’m sure it’s not going to be the last time that individuals take action that people are going to question.
“We should have been standing up for those passengers,” the mayor said. “That’s what we should have done for the city, and standing up for those passengers means addressing the mental health crisis we have in the city, and not just waiting until incidents like this happen.”
Adams also reiterated the need for help from city and state lawmakers to fix the “broken” mental health system.
“We need help in Albany and in the City Council, we can’t sit back and mourn the loss of someone that is caught up in the system, and we’re not taking the action every day,” Adams said. “But a jury of his peers heard the case, all the facts and all the evidence and made a decision, and I join DA Bragg in stating that I respect the process.”
A Manhattan jury found Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Neely on Monday morning after days of deliberations, and following the dismissal of a manslaughter charge on Friday after jurors said they couldn’t come to an agreement.
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
Protestors gather outside Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday. (Barry Williams / New York Daily News)
Moments after the jury’s verdict was read, protesters gathered outside of Manhattan Supreme Court.
Hawk Newsome, co-founder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, said outside the courthouse that America “has failed” Neely and his supporters.
“This system protects every other group except for the very group that built this country,” Newsome said. “Every group that comes here gets benefits, gets privileges except for the very people whose fingerprints are on the bricks that built this country. There is no love for Black people. There’s no love in the system. How can you make a moral appeal to a people that have no moral code? How can you preach love to racists?
For Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, the verdict was a reminder of past injustices against Black victims.
“It’s two justice systems, and we have to stop this and the only way we can stop is to stand together, those of us who are against what happened, we have to speak up,” said Carr, whose son died after being placed in an illegal chokehold by a Staten Island cop in 2014.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, took to social media following Monday’s verdict: “Great news for Daniel and America,” he wrote.
“He’s a hero who saved lives. That trial should’ve NEVER HAPPENED in the first place.”
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams called the not guilty verdict a “stain to a city and to people who look like Jordan.”
“You cannot be allowed to choke people to death, and you shouldn’t be allowed to do that with absolutely no consequences, and that’s what occurred here, and everybody should be worried about that,” Williams told the Daily News at City Hall.
Williams laid some blame for the verdict on politicians who have defended Penny — and took particular aim at the mayor over remarks last week that Penny was “doing what we should have done as a city.”
“Based on those comments, I’m sure [Adams] is excited for this devaluing of someone’s life that had a lot of value and who literally said he was hungry,” Williams said, calling that comment “disgusting.”
City Council Speaker Diana Ayala, who chairs the Council committee that oversees the city’s homeless shelter system, slammed the not guilty verdict as a “miscarriage of justice” and criticized the mayor and other politicians for standing up for Penny.
“They tainted that conversation,” Ayala said of other politicians. “It was never a fair trial.”
“We have a mental health crisis in the city, and it’s not a nice feeling to be on the receiving end of those encounters,” Ayala said. “Sometimes they can be really scary and I get that and I think that he was heroic in attempting to be helpful, but what he did was involuntary manslaughter and he should have been held accountable for that.”
Barry Williams / New York Daily News
Jordan Neely’s father, Andre Zachary, reacts to Daniel Penny’s acquittal during a press conference outside Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Assemblymember and mayoral challenger Zohran Mamdani also called out the city’s mental health system in a statement.
“Today’s verdict is not justice – nor was his killer a hero. This tragedy lays bare decades of policy failure that can no longer be tolerated,” Mamdani said, calling for more crisis intervention programs, community-based mental health services and more housing.
