Throughout his manslaughter trial, Daniel Penny remained stoic, disciplined and emotionless, never once smiling or grimacing in frustration.
His posture is so straight that he can hang the picture perfectly on his back. The age of 26 is a blank slate for everyone. Is he the former castaway Jarhead? The police said, “I am [Jordan Neely] Outside. “Did the protesters outside the courtroom call him a vigilante?
He's none of those things.
According to character witnesses, including two Marine sergeants who served with him, a childhood friend, his brother and his mother, “Danny's” straight face belies a “softness” and compassion. He's still a man connected to his childhood roots in West Islip, Long Island, where the surfer was a lacrosse standout and played bass in the local orchestra.
“He was very kind. If anything, he was very kind…He always spoke openly,” Alexandra Fay, a childhood friend of Penny's, told jurors Monday.
This is not grounds for canonization. But again, this guy is not the one on the defense team for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
On Monday, after three days of grueling testimony from Coroner Dr. Cynthia Harris, the prosecution adjourned. He said Jordan Neeley “was found to have had enough drugs in his system to provide pain relief, but Penny's strangulation alone would have killed him.” elephant. “
Penny's defense began as news broke that the insane and violent criminal Ramon Rivera had gone on a rampage across Manhattan, stabbing three innocent strangers to death. It was a reminder of the real and random horrors unleashed on the citizens of New York City by progressive policies.
First, Penny's attorney, Thomas Kenniff, called the defendant's sister, Jackie, to talk about their close relationship, their childhood love of the outdoors, and their bond with their grandparents, which grew stronger after their parents divorced.
Then Gina Frame-Penny said her son wanted to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis. When she wasn't accepted despite her excellent grades and lacrosse skills, Penny enlisted in the Marines, which made her “insecure.”
The mother's nervousness was evident as she stood in the stands. I asked her if she was testifying to the truth, and she said yes, saying something in a low voice that I couldn't hear, but her face was clearly contorted in pain.
Nolan Dryley, Penny's former platoon sergeant, described the Marine Corps veteran as “beyond reproach” and detailed how Penny was awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal for his 2018 Hurricane Florence relief efforts.
Gunnery Sergeant Nathaniel Dunchy, who now lives in Texas, spoke of Penny's insight as a Marine and her acceptance of everything.
Prosecutors countered by pointing out that Penny's friend Fay had donated to her defense fund, GoFundMe, but Judge Maxwell Wiley cut off that line of questioning. And in a dirty hurrah, they brought up past social media posts to try to smear both Marines — to challenge their judgment as peaceful people.
Playing on the anti-gun sensibilities of Manhattan residents, one of the assistant prosecutors brought up an innocuous video that Dunchy had posted on TikTok, showing him displaying a gun inside his fanny pack and saying, “No one would know. '' accompanied by a voice.
Kenniff asked if Texans have a different attitude toward guns, adding, “Are you a criminal?”
“No, it’s not,” said Dunchy.
And so is Penny.
All these testimonies brought life to the defendant and created a portrait of a peaceful, caring man who was wired to intervene on behalf of strangers in need.
It was a sharp contrast to the afternoon when forensic psychiatrist Alexander Vardy took the stand. Doctors testified that they reviewed 4,000 to 5,000 pages of Neely's psychiatric history from 2015 to 2021, documenting more than a dozen hospitalizations.
Mr Vardy said the most common diagnoses were schizophrenia and abuse of the synthetic drug K2, and described Mr Neely's case as “serious”.
Medical records reveal Neely's paranoid fear that people would try to hurt him and that rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996, wanted to use him to change the world. It became clear.
Neely also had a history of violence and was a danger to himself and other New Yorkers.
Penny sensed it. And even though prosecutors claimed in their opening statements that they were not aware of the [Neely’s] The former Marine saw humanity all around him on the F train in May 2023 and decided to take action.
