BREAKING: Daniel Penny found NOT GUILTY of criminally negligent homicide in Jordan Neely death

The verdict comes after nearly one week after the jury began deliberations. They began deliberating the second count on Monday morning. Applause reportedly broke out from the Penny side of the courtroom Monday morning as the verdict was read, per Inner City Press, men in the gallery said, "It's a small world, buddy" and "It's a racist country!" The defense had moved for a mistrial Monday morning after protests were heard from outside the building. Protestors had chanted "Daniel Penny, subway strangler," and "If we don't get no justice, they don't get no peace," which was captured on Penny's lawyer's cell phone. The judge denied the request for a mistrial but allowed the video to go into the court records.

Penny was charged with second-degree manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely after an altercation in the spring of 2023. The manslaughter charge, however, was dismissed after jurors remained deadlocked on the count. The jury had returned two notes on Friday declaring that they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on that count. Judge Wiley told the jury to go back and continue deliberations after the first note, and after the second note, the prosecution requested to dismiss the manslaughter count, which Wiley granted.

In 2023, Penny and others restrained Neely on an uptown F train, with Penny placing him in a chokehold, after Neely began threatening people on the train, per witnesses. Witnesses said that Neely was threatening death to those on the train, claiming that he didn't care if he died himself. Penny and other men on the train sought to restrain Neely and wrestled him to the floor. When the train pulled into the next station, and officers arrived, they found that Neely had a pulse and engaged in lifesaving methods. They declined to perform CPR, however, because they feared they would get hepatitis. Neely was pronounced dead at a local hospital, with the death being ruled a homicide by neck compression.

The medical examiner in the case stated during trial testimony that she made the determination of the cause of death after watching the video. Neely's toxicology report following his death showed drugs in his system, as well. Defense expert Dr. Satish Chundru testified during the trial that he believed Neely had died from a combination of K2, which is a synthetic drug, his sickle cell genetic disorder, psychosis, as well as exertion from the struggle.

During Monday's closing arguments, defense attorney Steven Raiser told jurors to imagine themselves on the train when Neely got on "filled with rage and not afraid of any consequences," NBC 4 reported. "You’re sitting much as you are now, in this tightly confined space. You have very little room to move and none to run."

"Danny acted to save those people," he added. Raiser also said that "Danny could not foresee a sickling death," so "he is not guilty."

In closing arguments that continued into Tuesday, Manhattan prosecutor Dafna Yoran told the jury that Penny "didn't recognize that Jordan Neely was a person" and that "He saw him as a person that needed to be eliminated," per Fox News. Yoran previously bragged about engaging in "restorative justice" for a man who murdered a professor while mugging him at an ATM machine in uptown New York. She conviced the son of the murdered man to speak to the family of the killer and sympathize with the man who killed his father. The killer got only 10 years in prison.

She said that Penny "was so reckless with Neely’s life because he didn't seem to recognize his humanity," and replayed video of Penny’s police interrogation in which he referred to Neely as a "crackhead" and said "You know these guys, they’re pushing people in front of trains and stuff."

Yoran said, "We’ve all spoken dismissively about people like Jordan Neely. Maybe we, too, have lumped them all together like this, but the context is very telling here. When the defendant is talking like this about Mr. Neely, he knows he very likely had killed him. Can you imagine a reasonable person speaking like this about a human being that he or she had just killed.

Body cam footage from a New York Police Department officer showed that Neely still had a pulse when first responders arrived at the scene. Officers testified at the trial that they did not want to give Neely mouth-to-mouth over concerns about contracting hepatitis. Neely was a drug user.

A 911 call was played during the trial, in which 18-year-old Moriela Sanchez was heard asking dispatch to send police and an ambulance because someone was trying to attack passengers. She said, "He’s trying to attack everybody," describing the attacker as black and adding that "There’s one white man holding him down, holding the homeless guy down."

Sanchez testified in court, "Penny put his hands around [Neely’s] neck and then dropped him down so he wouldn’t attack anybody." Sanchez’s friend, Ivette Rosario, testified that she was "scared" of Neely, and was the ony who took video of the May 2023 incident with her phone showing Penny holding Neely on the floor. Witness Caedryn Schrunk testified that she thought she was going to die after listening to Neely’s "satanic" rant, adding that Neely had "visibly soiled sweatpants" and said "I don’t care if I die. Kill me, lock me up."