How The Daniel Penny Trial Proves Self-Defense Is Under Attack In Our Country

Early in the afternoon of May 1st of 2023, several passengers on board a New York City subway car thought their lives were about to end. A 30-year-old career criminal named Jordan Neely — who had been arrested more than 40 times, including for punching a 67-year-old woman on the subway and breaking her nose — had just boarded the train. And as soon as the doors closed, he began threatening the passengers. Multiple eyewitnesses said that Neely threw his jacket across the train, adopted a fighting stance, and yelled, “Someone is going to die today.” Neely added that he would happily “kill anyone” and “take a bullet,” saying he was “ready to go to Rikers” and “ready to do life” because he wanted to “hurt people.”

One passenger on the train later told a New York grand jury that Neely’s behavior was “sickening” and “satanic.” Another passenger testified that what he experienced was “absolutely traumatizing,” above and beyond anything he had previously experienced in more than six years riding the subway. He recounted the moment when Neely approached him, saying he thought he was, “going to die.” A mother and her son hid behind a stroller as Neely began lunging towards them, coming within a half a foot of some passengers. A student commuting to high school said she prayed that the doors would open so that she could escape. One retiree who rode the subway every day for more than 30 years told the Grand Jury: “I have been riding the subway for many years. I have encountered many things, but nothing that put fear into me like that.”

What happened next is documented on video. This is a report from shortly after the incident. Watch:

As you heard, the witnesses didn’t think Jordan Neely was in serious danger. He was fighting back the whole time. Instead, the people on the train justifiably thought their lives were at risk. And so they joined in to help 25-year-old Daniel Penny, a former Marine, subdue the threat.

Police who responded didn’t arrest Penny. That didn’t happen until more than 10 days later, after politicians like AOC and Julie Salazar charged that Neely’s death was a public lynching.

Pretty much the only prominent politician in New York who didn’t go to that extreme was the mayor, Eric Adams. He said Neely’s death made him realize that it’s really important to institutionalize a lot of mentally ill vagrants, which is true. And now they’ve charged Eric Adams with a bunch of crimes, because he kept going off script. Just in case you were wondering how New York works.

Meanwhile, Left-wing activists also began terrorizing the subway system, saying they wouldn’t stop until the D.A., Alvin Bragg, brought charges against Penny. Watch:

"We gonna stop the next train in 7 minutes" Protesters proceeded to stop F train by blocking the doors and holding them open, then jumping onto the tracks across the platform, stopping a second incoming train.

FULL VIDEO: https://t.co/T7LWrxg7gA pic.twitter.com/4ARBc5PeIg

— Oliya Scootercaster ???? (@ScooterCasterNY) May 7, 2023

So they kneel on the tracks. They prevent a bunch of people from getting to where they want to go. And yet, none of these BLM activists are going on trial this week. The mob always gets what it wants in New York. So instead, this week, jury selection began in the trial of Daniel Penny. Alvin Bragg has charged him with criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter, which could put Penny in prison for up to 15 years. On Monday, BLM was outside the courthouse, and again they were chanting, “No justice, no peace.”

When I talked about this case last year, I went into some detail about the media’s attempts to paper over Jordan Neely’s record. They kept calling him a “Michael Jackson impersonator,” as if that’s why the passengers had to subdue him. The implication is that he was moonwalking too much, or doing a really bad rendition of “Man in the Mirror.” I also discussed how this episode is being manufactured to create as much racial tension as possible. If Daniel Penny had been black, then no one would be talking about this case at all.

What I didn’t talk about, because we didn’t have all the details at the time, is what the inevitable prosecution of Daniel Penny was going to look like. And now that we have that information, it’s safe to say this is easily the most egregious criminal prosecution in a case of self-defense since the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. In fact, it’s significantly worse than the Rittenhouse trial, in my opinion. We all knew this would be a political show trial. What we didn’t know is how flagrant the show trial would be.

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

I’ll start with the prosecution’s theory of the case. This is from the New York Post:

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has argued that Penny knew during the encounter that he might kill Neely, even if that was not his intention. They’ve cited testimony from a Marine trainer, who told the grand jury that Marines are taught that chokeholds — which are meant to be a non-lethal restraint — can sometimes be fatal.

Before we get into the the testimony they’re talking about, let’s be very clear about what’s happening here. The prosecution is effectively conceding that, when Daniel Penny restrained Jordan Neely, he wasn’t trying to kill him. So they’ve downgraded this to an accidental lynching. The prosecution is saying Daniel Penny should spend 15 years in prison because he supposedly disregarded a risk that chokeholds can sometimes be fatal. And to make that argument, they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Penny and his fellow passengers weren’t experiencing a reasonable fear for their lives during this incident. That’s the needle they plan to thread here.

To put this in context, the typical manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide case in New York looks nothing like this. The textbook example would be that someone gets intoxicated, drives well over the speed limit, crosses the double-yellow line and kills someone. That’s the kind of clearly reckless behavior the law normally applies to.

But in this case, Alvin Bragg wants to imprison Daniel Penny because, in direct response to a dangerous vagrant making threats of violence, he performed a defensive maneuver that could, potentially, be lethal.

Of course, literally any kind of physical altercation could be lethal. A punch or a shove could be lethal. If everyone acknowledges that Penny wasn’t trying to kill Neely, and was just trying to restrain him so that he didn’t hurt any of the passengers, then what exactly are we doing here? What are they saying about this particular chokehold that makes it so reckless, and so inappropriate, that it’s criminal?

I went and pulled up some of the testimony from the government’s expert witness on chokeholds. It’s contained in the defense’s motion to dismiss the case, which a judge rejected. The expert’s name is Sergeant Caballer. Again, this is the government’s witness, not the defense witness. And this is what he told the grand jury in this case. The sergeant testified that, in the Marines, the chokehold technique that Penny learned is a non-lethal maneuver intended to subdue an aggressor. The sergeant did say a chokehold can be fatal when it’s applied “to the full extent.” But as the defense’s motion outlines, the expert clarified that Penny didn’t apply the chokehold to the “full extent.”

According to the sergeant, if you want to kill someone in a chokehold, then your best bet is to place more pressure on the arteries by pushing the head forward. You’d also want to apply pressure to the carotid arteries using a specific placement of the arm and elbow. But Penny didn’t do either of those things. The sergeant testified that Penny’s arm did not allow him to, “apply a lot of pressure to those carotid arteries.” Instead, Penny placed pressure primarily on the, “upper part of the jaw.” Here’s the key: “All things considered of where his hand placement is and arm placement, it looks as though he’s just holding him.”

Additionally, several eyewitnesses testified that they never heard Neely “gasping, gagging, or saying he could not breathe.”

In other words, Daniel Penny performed a maneuver that he was trained to perform as a non-lethal way of subduing threats. It took him several minutes longer than he probably thought it would, because Jordan Neely was fighting back and because he had a coat on. But that’s what happened here.

By the way, this is the kind of maneuver that’s so common in the military that you can pull up hundreds of videos of chokehold training. Here’s one of them:

So they’re making light of the whole thing. They probably shouldn’t, but that gives you some idea how widely taught the technique is. The expected result is the person who’s subdued will quickly recover. 

That obviously didn’t happen in this case. And from the testimony of the medical examiner so far, we don’t know exactly why. The medical examiner indicated that asphyxiation was the cause of death. But from the defense’s motion, we don’t know if that’s actually supported by the evidence. Causation is going to be a big issue in this trial — as in, did Daniel Penny actually cause the death of Jordan Neely. We don’t know if Jordan Neely died because of pressure that was applied to the carotid artery, or to the windpipe, or for some other reason.

MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ COMING TO DAILYWIRE+ OCT. 28

What we do know is that, when someone has to be forcibly restrained by several people for their own protection, there’s a risk something can go wrong. People die suddenly when they get hit with a Taser. Sometimes people die suddenly when they go for a run. Stress is inherently dangerous, and physical altercations only compound the risk of someone dying. It happens all the time. That’s why it’s a bad idea to pick fights with people on the train and threaten to kill them. Even when they’re trying to subdue you using a non-violent technique, things can go wrong. That’s a risk the aggressor assumes — not his victims.

What this testimony from the government’s witness underscores, once again, is that this case never should have been brought. No matter what happens — even if Daniel Penny is acquitted — it’s still a grotesque miscarriage of justice. A healthy society would have given Penny an award and thanked him for his service to the community. Instead, the same prosecutors who tried to jail the leading presidential candidate are now trying to imprison a man who defended a subway car full of passengers from a raving lunatic. 

And this isn’t just happening in New York. In Chicago, the police board just recommended firing a police officer because he shot someone who drew a gun on him. That’s not an exaggeration. They want to fire a police officer because he defended himself against an armed man, on camera. Watch:

Chicago, IL????

•Reginald Clay pulled a gun on a cop during a foot chase.
•The Police Board recommended termination.
•The Police Superintendent disagreed but was overruled.

•Alleged Policy Violations.
1. Foot chase policy.
2. De-escalation policy.

(1) pic.twitter.com/ONcPZIMkAW

— police.law.news (@policelawnews) October 19, 2024

This is what the destruction of Americans’ constitutional rights looks like. For the millions of people living in places like Chicago and New York, it’s happening in real-time. The only choice they’re offered is to submit to the mob, or get crushed by it. This is what Soros-backed prosecutors like Alvin Bragg are doing all over the country. They’re implementing mob rule. That’s been their goal for several years now. And with the trial of Daniel Penny, we’re about to see just how powerful the mob has become.