It wasn't the chokehold that killed Jordan Neely.
This was the defense testimony of forensic pathologist Dr. Satish Chundru, who was very persuasive.
Or at least it was effective in sowing the seeds of reasonable doubt that Daniel Penny's ruse caused Neely's death on the F train uptown on May 1, 2023.
On stage, Tundor calmly and confidently explained why City Coroner Dr. Cynthia Harris was wrong to declare Neely dead from strangulation.
Tundor, who previously worked as a coroner in both Austin and Miami, called his findings “speculative.” He added that it was “shocking” that the verdict was handed down in just two days.
Harris reached her conclusion before the toxicology report came back, and even though Neely was found to have “enough fentanyl to knock down an elephant” in her system, she still reneged on her original decision. He said he would have stuck to it.
Chundru explained simply and frankly. Asphyxiation is essentially a two-part process.
“Phase one is unconsciousness. You have to apply enough sustained pressure to make the person unconscious,” Tundor said. “In the second stage, lethal pressure must be maintained for a long period of time.”
Chundru said Neely had already taken her last breath or was on the verge of death. Prosecutors say Penny put Neely in a chokehold for 51 seconds after Neely lost consciousness.
However, Tundor said, “Mr. Neely had never lost consciousness before. That is necessary if the death was due to suffocation.''
So what killed him? Chundru said it was a combination of synthetic marijuana, also known as K2, schizophrenia, his own struggles and self-control, and sickle cell crisis, an often painful and devastating event in which cells change shape and block blood vessels. “It's a complex effect,” he said.
Mr. Harris was the prosecution's most effective witness to date, and prosecutors submitted a list of bystanders who saw Mr. Neely, a homeless man with a history of drug use and mental illness, board the subway. He said he had never experienced such fear. He got on the F train uptown and began yelling profanities, saying he was going to kill him. One woman told jurors she even thanked Penny for his actions that day.
Harris endured three days on the stand, a grueling process that would test the attention span of even the most elite.
During a morning break in Mr. Tundor's testimony, prosecutors swarmed Mr. Harris, sat in the second row, took notes, and had a very intense meeting.
Only the jury will know how it was decided, but I thought Chundur did a great job in punching the necessary holes in the prosecution's case.
However, after discussing blood suffocation, air suffocation, and arteries in the morning, the prosecution focused squarely on Chundul's carotid artery during intense cross-examination.
Dafna Göran, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, tried to paint him as an unintelligent hired gun who performed too many autopsies and made a lot of money for his work. She noted that he is regularly hired by defense attorneys to argue against prosecutors. (Approximately 60% of the cases he handled were like this.)
Mr. Tundor is unapologetic and is working hard, he said, adding that “business is going well.”
Mr. Yolan asked the forensic pathologist if he thought he knew more than the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, asking, “Do you know this is the largest medical examiner's office in the country?”
“They lost half their staff,” Tundor countered.
Mr. Göran, a very energetic and tenacious man, rebutted some of his testimony with excerpts from a textbook written by his mentor, but Mr. Cündur remained undaunted on stage on both Thursday and Friday.
The trial will resume next week.
