Six Manhattanites were picked Monday to serve on the jury at Daniel Penny’s lightning-rod manslaughter trial over the fatal subway chokehold of homeless man Jordan Neely — including two who said they’ve experienced harassment on the transit system.
The panelists chosen so far include a Yorkville insurance attorney who recalled being randomly “rammed” by a woman with a cart during her morning commute eight years ago.
“She just rammed the cart into me, called me a name and I just backed off,” the woman said during jury selection in Manhattan Supreme Court. “It kind of ended there.”
Another juror, an Upper East Side retiree, said that a “homeless gentleman” once harassed him for “no particular reason” while he was on the Q train at 96th Street.
A third juror is a retired public librarian living in Morningside Heights who said her daughter was assaulted by a mentally ill or homeless man in the middle of Times Square about seven years ago.
“This man walked up behind her… and he punched her in the back of the head,” she said.
Other jurors include a theater buff who lives in Lincoln Center, a healthcare pro who emigrated to the US from the Philippines and a software engineer from Atlanta.
Three out of the six jurors selected in the case so far said they ride the subway regularly, while the other three say they take it once in a while.
A panel of 12 jurors total and four alternates will ultimately be chosen to decide whether Penny, a 25-year-old former Marine, is guilty of “recklessly” killing Neely, 30, who had a history of mental health problems.
Penny is accused of placing the homeless subway busker in a six-minute chokehold after Neely, who was unarmed, verbally threatened passengers inside a crowded northbound F train as it approached the Broadway-Lafayette station on May 1, 2023.
Prosecutors will argue that Penny acted recklessly and ignored an “unjustifiable risk” by continuing to choke Neely even after the subway doors opened onto the platform — allowing some frightened passengers to flee — and for a minute after he lost consciousness.
Penny’s lawyers have argued that his actions were justified to protect himself and other straphangers, and have cited Neely’s chronic abuse of the drug K2, which they say made him prone to violent outbursts.
At least one of the jurors, a young black man who moved to the East Village from Atlanta, said during juror questioning last week that he’s familiar with the effects of the dangerous synthetic marijuana product.
“Not that he deserved it, but I think just the influence of drugs… you don’t really know what a person is going to do on K2,” he mused to Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran on Friday.
“It’s two people, but it’s one that you don’t really know in the moment what the person is going to do,” he added.
One of Penny’s attorneys, Thomas Kenniff, polled the group of prospective jurors about whether they agreed that subway crime was on the rise, whether they agreed with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops on the subway and whether they agreed that homelessness was a significant problem on the subway.
More than a dozen prospective jurors were axed from the case for various reasons Monday. Among the panelists bounced from the case “for cause” was one woman who said she might be sympathetic to Penny because her father and brother served in the US Army.
The woman added that she could not be “impartial” in deciding whether to convict Penny because she’s been harassed as a straphanger — and feels that “people should step in when they see a woman getting harassed.”
“I’ve been stepped on, sat on, grinded up against, pushed – it’s all just part of taking the subway,” the woman said.
Jury selection in the case is set to continue Tuesday morning.
Penny faces up to 15 years in prison if he’s convicted of second-degree manslaughter, and up to four years if he’s convicted on the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide.
