NEW YORK—More than a year after Jordan Neely was strangled on a northbound F train, resulting in his death, a jury in Manhattan delivered a verdict that set his killer free. After the jury declared themselves deadlocked on the second-degree manslaughter charge last week, 24-year-old Daniel Penny was acquitted of the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter on the following Monday.
According to witnesses, Penny grinned as the verdict was given, and his supporters began to cheer. Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, became visibly upset and had to be escorted from the courtroom by bailiffs.
Prosecutors argued that 24-year-old Daniel Penny, a former Marine, held Neely in a chokehold for at least six agonizing minutes while bystanders either held Neely down or did not intervene. When the New York City Police Department arrived on the platform at Broadway-Lafayette, just one stop away, they administered Narcan, an anti-overdose medicine, and performed CPR. They waited for the Fire Department to arrive and take Neely to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
After interviewing Penny, the NYPD let him go. It was only after widespread outcry that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted the former Marine, spurring a campaign by the extreme right to paint him as a hero.
A fundraiser for Penny raised $3.3 million for his defense. Project 2025’s publisher, the Heritage Foundation, said the prosecution was politically motivated. “Alvin Bragg wants to make sure the next Daniel Penny doesn’t dare to help other victims,” they said in a statement, omitting the fact that the only victim on that F train was Neely, who died at the hands of the man the Heritage Foundation sought to defend.
Not the first time
Indeed, it was not the first time that Neely was victimized by a racist system that condemns the poor to premature death. When he was 14 years old, his mother was murdered in an act of femicide by a man she was in an abusive relationship with. Neely was immediately captured by the court system, both as a witness to the man’s trial and as a foster child.
What followed was his lifelong battle for care in a system that neglects those with mental health needs, often resulting in homelessness, as happened to Neely. When the police took inventory of Neely’s belongings after he was killed, they found only a muffin in his pocket.
A bright light to those who remembered him, he spent many years performing as a Michael Jackson impersonator in the New York City subway system. After his killing, the New York City Department of Homeless Services announced that Neely was on the list of the 50 people experiencing homelessness who were most in need of help and care.
Jawanza Williams, Managing Director of Organizing with VOCAL-NY and one of the leaders who took to the streets in response to Neely’s murder, spoke to People’s World about the verdict. Williams discussed how society’s views on homelessness condemned Neely to death before Daniel Penny even got on the train that day.
“Why was he in this situation? [Penny] was inflamed by the rhetoric of Mayor Eric Adams and [Governor] Kathy Hochul. They created this environment of fear, and that empowered people like Daniel Penny to commit acts of vigilante violence,” Williams said.
Under Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams’ tenure, both offices have scaled up the presence of police officers and the National Guard in the subway system. This is despite the incredibly low rate of crime in the subway system.
“Every time I see a story on PIX11 about violence on the subway from someone experiencing homelessness, they play it over and over again for days and weeks, without mentioning that there literally were two million people who rode the subway that day who had no problem at all,” Williams said. “The violence we need to contend with is the violence spurred on by politicians.”
With another Donald Trump administration on the horizon, Williams expects that the situation will get worse for people experiencing poverty and homelessness. “We are in an emergency situation where we need all of the working people across the country to realize that we need to get organized to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. If we do not protect them, then we are subject to lose what little protections some of us enjoy today.”
As for the threat of vigilante violence against the most vulnerable, Williams is even more concerned for the future. “MAGA is a death-dealing ideology. It’s incredibly dangerous, and it produces people like Daniel Penny. We risk seeing more of that kind of behavior because it’s been essentially sanctioned by the court’s decision and was sanctioned in the lead-up to his murder by the political rhetoric against the homeless.”
While the jury was deliberating on the Penny case, just blocks away two teenage migrants were stabbed, one killed, by men who first asked if they spoke English. Both teenagers were housed in a migrant shelter in the Roosevelt Hotel.
“It’s not just happening in New York City, it’s happening across the U.S.,” Williams asserted. “We need to center the homeless with love, care, and compassion. We need city and state budgets to mitigate homelessness and mental health complexities so that people aren’t subjected to the type of treatment Jordan experienced.”
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