The original subway vigilante, Bernie Goetz, thinks the prosecution of Daniel Penny for the chokehold death of Jordan Neely aboard a train was “BS.”
Goetz, 77, spoke to WABC’s Frank Morano Dec. 10 about the Penny case, nearly 40 years to the day after he shot a foursome of thugs who tried to rob him on a Manhattan train.
“This is about New York, and New York I consider a BS society, and what the Penny case has in common with my case is, it’s all BS,” he told the host of the show, “The Other Side of Midnight.”
“This is what you have in some democratic states with left wing government,” added Goetz.
Goetz said the legal system should be “a truth-seeking process,” but that his case, and the case against Penny, were not.
“Here when you see lawfare, it’s not so much to protect the public but to simply impose the will of the people running the system,” Goetz added in the 30-minute interview. “That’s what my case was and that’s what you have here. It was a political trial.”
He called Penny’s acquittal “a good thing.”
Penny was acquitted Dec. 9 by a Manhattan jury on charges of criminally negligent homicide in the high profile case which sparked intense debate about mental illness, public safety and the responsibilities of bystanders.
The 26-year-old Marine veteran was caught on camera putting Neely, 30, in a chokehold after the troubled homeless man menaced others and made threats on May 1, 2023 while on an uptown F train.
On Dec. 22, 1984, Goetz opened fire on four youths who demanded money from him on a downtown 2 train.
One of the victims, James Ramseur, committed suicide by intentionally overdosing on prescription pills on the 27th anniversary of the shooting in 2011; another victim, Darell Cabey, was left paralyzed.
Goetz said the chaos of today’s subways doesn’t compare to riding the rails in the 1980s.
“There was much more violence in the 80s,” he said. “It was a poorer society. We had a much greater percentage of the population preying on the rest of the population.”
His own case “basically shed light on the high crime in New York and that New York City was failing as a city, and also the government here was simply not addressing crime at the time,” he said.
Goetz said his prosecution was sparked by then-governor Mario Cuomo’s presidential aspirations.
“Mario Cuomo himself was saying New York had successful policies to raise people up from poverty, and in fact New York was failing and I went around saying on national TV that New York government was incompetent and corrupt.”
Penny’s prosecution would likely change his life, Goetz mused.
“This may change his life a lot. You don’t really appreciate how much BS goes on until you’re on the inside on some type of high publicity situation,” Goetz said. “He’s gone through this, he may have some good insights as he grows older.”
