LOWER MANHATTAN (PIX11) -- As jurors head into the third day of deliberations in the trial of Daniel Penny in New York City on Thursday, they made clear on Wednesday that they’re focused on specific items of evidence.
Penny, 26, is a Marine Corps veteran accused of using a chokehold to kill Jordan Neely, a homeless man with a history of mental illness, by using a chokehold on the 30-year-old during an incident on the subway in May of last year.
Late Wednesday morning, jurors asked the judge in the case if they could look at three items of video evidence that had been presented at trial: cellphone video of Penny holding down Jordan Neely in the May 1, 2023 incident, which was recorded by an eyewitness; video of Penny's interview with detectives at a police precinct shortly after the incident; and police body camera video from the scene in an F train subway car.
The judge granted the jurors' requests, and they continued deliberating into Wednesday afternoon.
Around 3:20 p.m., they asked for more evidence: a read-back of testimony that had been made during the trial by Dr. Cynthia Harris, a medical examiner for the city. She and other medical examiners in her office all concluded that Jordan Neely died from asphyxiation -- the result of a chokehold from Daniel Penny.
Jurors have to determine whether or not that hold constituted reckless and unjustifiable fatal action against Neely, as well as to what extent that action was carried out.
If jurors conclude that Penny needlessly held down Neely in a reckless manner, they can convict him of manslaughter, according to instructions from the judge. The punishment for that charge is a prison term of up to 15 years. If they conclude that the act of subduing Neely was criminal, but less severe than manslaughter, they can convict Daniel Penny of criminally negligent homicide, a crime that has a penalty of up to four years in prison.
The read-back of testimony that jurors had requested had begun at the end of the day on Wednesday, and is scheduled to continue when they return to deliberate on Thursday morning.
Penny's attorneys also said that a protester outside of the courthouse had attacked the SUV from which Penny had been dropped off on Wednesday morning. The protester was subdued by court officers. Defense attorneys also asked the judge to try and ensure that jurors could not hear protesters' chants from outside while they were deliberating inside the courthouse. Judge Maxwell Wiley pledged to try and ensure that jurors had minimal outside disruptions during their deliberations.
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