NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
EXCLUSIVE: One of the lawyers who successfully defended New York City subway hero Daniel Penny is calling out what he terms the “dysfunctional homicidal policies of the radical left,” arguing that progressive criminal justice policies that keep violent, mentally ill repeat offenders on the streets lead to preventable tragedies like the recent Charlotte train stabbing in North Carolina.
“These are homicidal policies,” said Thomas Kenniff, a partner at Raiser Kenniff & Lonstein. “If you are unwilling to support criminal justice policies that where circumstances require you have the incarceration or institutionalization of violently dangerous people, understand you’re making a choice and you’re standing for something that is going to get innocent people like this poor young woman in Charlotte, killed.”
Decarlos Brown Jr., a 34-year-old with a history of mental illness and more than a dozen prior charges, allegedly stabbed 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska in the neck from behind in an unprovoked attack on a light rail train on Aug. 22, according to authorities.
EX-ESPN HOST CALLS ON NYC MAYOR TO TAKE ‘CLEARLY UNWELL AND VIOLENT MEN’ OFF STREETS AFTER CHARLOTTE STABBING
Iryna Zarutska cowers as her attacker towers over her. (NewsNation via Charlotte Area Transit System)
He was released without bail for a prior misdemeanor charge of allegedly misusing the 911 system.
“The alleged assailant in this case, my understanding is at least 14 arrests, prior psychiatric commitments, jail sentences — he was able to walk out of that courtroom with, you know, signing a note, ‘I promise to come back,'” Kenniff told Fox News Digital. “Daniel Penny, after having served his country for four years in the Marine Corps, attending college, no prior criminal record… we had to post $100,000 bond.”
Kenniff has long warned that the persecution of Penny would put a chilling effect on other potential good Samaritans, who not only have to worry about their personal safety when intervening to stop a violent crime, but may also be afraid of being targeted by left-wing prosecutors.
CHARLOTTE TRAIN STABBING SUSPECT’S BROTHER SAYS KILLING COULD HAVE BEEN ‘PREVENTED’
Booking photo of Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr., taken Aug. 28, 2025, days after the fatal light-rail stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. (Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO))
Jurors found Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in December, after he put a mentally ill man named Jordan Neely, 30, in a chokehold on a subway car. Neely had schizophrenia, was behaving erratically, high on drugs and threatening riders. He died after the encounter.
Zarutska, the Charlotte victim, was a refugee who came to the U.S. after fleeing the war in her native Ukraine. Video shows she collapsed to the ground and bled out in front of at least a half-dozen bystanders in an unprovoked stabbing. She was on her way home from work at a pizzeria, looking at her phone from a seat on the train when video shows a man in red open a pocket knife behind her immediately before the stabbing.
CHARLOTTE’S ‘PRO-CRIME’ POLICIES UNDER FIRE AS CAREER CRIMINAL CHARGED WITH KILLING COMMUTER: EXPERT
Ukrainian Iryna Zarutska came to the U.S. to escape war but was stabbed to death in Charlotte on Friday. (Evgeniya Rush/GoFundMe)
While police statistics show major crimes, including homicides, are on the decline, Kenniff said they don’t paint a full picture.
“The only statistic that should matter is how many preventable, otherwise preventable crimes are occurring,” he told Fox News Digital.
Kenniff noted that even Brown’s family wanted him off the streets before the stabbing.
“From what I’ve read, his own mother tried to commit him involuntarily and had a judge, whose job it is to uphold the law and collateral to that obviously protect the public, release that person on a note that they’ll come back to court,” he told Fox News Digital. “And [to] not look at that as a man-made preventable crime — that did not need to occur.”
Stabbing victim Iryna Zarutsk fled Ukraine for the US. (@lucaveros225/Instagram)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Brown faces first-degree murder in North Carolina as well as a federal charge of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday that the Justice Department will seek the maximum penalty for Brown, saying that the Aug. 22 attack was a “direct result of failed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals before innocent people.”
“We will seek the maximum penalty for this unforgivable act of violence,” she said. “He will never again see the light of day as a free man.”
Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have also proposed a bill to change how judges set bail and bond, according to the Charlotte News & Observer newspaper.
The proposed bill, Iryna’s Law, would make it harder for people accused of violent crimes to get pretrial release and imposes stricter conditions on them if they make bond. It would also expand the state’s authority to have mentally ill people forcibly committed.
Fox News’ Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.