Daniel Penny is set to be arraigned in Manhattan criminal court on June 28 for two counts of homicide in connection with the May 1 death of Jordan Neely. The indictment has not been unsealed, but Penny is reportedly charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. The difference between these charges is essentially the difference between recklessness and mere negligence. Second-degree manslaughter carries a potential sentence of up to 15 years in prison, while criminally negligent homicide carries a potential sentence of up to four years in prison.
The incident on the train happened because Neely was threatening passengers. Neely had over 40 prior arrests and had recently been released from a stint in jail for viciously punching a 67-year-old woman in the face at the Bowery train station in Greenwich Village, breaking her nose and orbital bone. Under these circumstances, Penny, a former Marine infantry officer, stepped up to defend himself and the other passengers. Penny is white and Neely was black, but the confrontation was not racially motivated.
The Bolshevik Left turned it into a racial incident, soon turbo-charged by Al Sharpton incitements at Neely’s funeral. This put pressure on Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who needlessly had Penny arrested days after the incident. Bragg could have just proceeded to present the case to the grand jury, but he wanted the spectacle of putting Penny through the arrest process and having $100,000 bail set, in order to signal solidarity with the race-obsessed Democratic base that elected him.
Bragg is engaged in strategic charging here. In light of Neely’s menacing behavior on the subway car before Penny intervened, the prosecutor grasps that a jury could easily conclude that Penny was justifiably acting in self-defense. If Bragg had charged just one count, the issue would come down to “guilty or not guilty?” — and the jury could find that not guilty was the fairer result.
Bragg’s adding a second count changes the calculation. Sure, he’d love to convict Penny on both counts, but to be seen as “winning” the case, he needs to get Penny on one count. Bragg no doubt figures that, if the jurors were to find that the recklessness charge is overblown, they could see the negligence charge as more reasonable. That is, they might well decide that convicting Penny of negligence, while acquitting him of recklessness, is a fairer result than acquitting him entirely.
Penny now faces a tough choice. He could argue that the negligence count is just a subset of the recklessness count, but the remedy for that would be to eliminate the less-serious negligence charge, meaning, if he weren’t acquitted, he’d be looking at a harsher sentence.
Since 2020, New York City has lost nearly half a million residents. That’s roughly the size of Miami’s total population (450,000). Meantime, close to 70,000 illegal aliens have flooded the Big Apple in the last few months, and the city lacks the housing, health, education, and law-enforcement resources to cope. Alvin Bragg continues doing his part to make Manhattan unlivable — and progressives continue to get the governance they voted for.
