Throughout his manslaughter trial, Daniel Penny has been stoic, disciplined and emotionless — never cracking a smile or a frustrated grimace.
His posture is so straight, you could hang a painting flush against his back. The 26-year-old’s been a blank slate for anyone to project upon. Is he a former jarhead adrift? A cold loner who told cops that he “put [Jordan Neely] out.” A vigilante, as protesters outside the courtroom have called him?
He is none of those things.
According to character witnesses — including two Marine Corps sergeants who served with him, childhood friends, his siblings and his mother — “Danny’s” straight face belies a “softness” and compassion. He remains a man connected to his childhood roots in West Islip, Long Island, where the surfer was a lacrosse standout and played bass in local orchestras.
“He was so kind. If anything he was extra kind … He always spoke up,” Penny’s childhood friend Alexandra Fay told the jury Monday.
A case for canonization, this hardly makes. But, then again, this is not a man who belongs behind a defense table fighting charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
On Monday, the prosecution rested after a grueling three days of testimony from medical examiner Dr. Cynthia Harris, who said that Jordan Neely was killed solely by Penny’s chokehold even if, it turned out, Neely had enough drugs in him “to put down an elephant.”
Penny’s defense started as news was breaking about madman and violent criminal Ramon Rivera fatally stabbing three innocent strangers in a spree across Manhattan — a reminder of the real and random terror that has been unleashed onto the citizens of New York City by progressive policies.
First, Penny’s attorney Thomas Kenniff called the defendant’s sister Jackie, who spoke of their close relationship, their outdoorsy childhood and his bond with their grandparents, strengthened after their parents’ divorce.
Then Gina Flaim-Penny said her son wanted to go to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. When he didn’t get accepted, despite his good grades and lacrosse skills, Penny joined the Marines, which made her “nervous.”
The mother’s nerves were on display while on the stand. Asked if she was testifying truthfully, she said yes and uttered something so softly I couldn’t make it out, but her face was obviously contorted to hold in the anguish.
Penny’s former platoon sergeant Nolan Drylie described the Marine veteran as “above reproach” and detailed how Penny won a Humanitarian Service Medal for his relief work during Hurricane Florence in 2018.
Gunnery Sgt. Nathaniel Dunchie, who now lives in Texas, spoke about Penny’s acumen as a Marine and his acceptance of all.
The prosecution countered by noting that Penny’s friend Fay had donated to his GoFundMe defense fund, but Judge MaxwellWiley shut down that line of questioning. And, in a filthy Hail Mary, they tried to stain both Marines by bringing up past social media posts — an attempt to counter their judgement as peaceful people.
In a play to Manhattanites’ anti-gun sensibilities, one of the assistant DAs brought up an innocuous video Dunchie posted on TikTok, showing him revealing a gun inside his fanny pack, accompanied by audio that says “no one will know.”
Kenniff asked if Texans have different attitudes toward guns, adding, “Are you a criminal?”
“No I am not,” Dunchie said.
And neither is Penny.
All of this testimony brought the defendant to life — creating a portrait of a peaceful and compassionate man hardwired to intervene on behalf of strangers in need.
It was a striking contrast to the afternoon, when forensic psychiatrist Alexander Bardey took the stand. The doctor testified that he reviewed between 4,000 and 5,000 pages of Neely’s psychiatric history, dating from 2015 to 2021 and including more than a dozen hospitalizations.
Bardey said the most common diagnoses were schizophrenia and abuse of the synthetic drug K2, describing Neely’s case as “severe.”
Medical records revealed Neely’s paranoid fears that people wanted to hurt him and his belief that rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996,wanted to use him to change the world.
Neely, who also had a history of violence, was a danger to himself — and to other New Yorkers.
Penny sensed that. And, despite the DA’s assertions in opening statements that he “didn’t recognize [Neely’s] humanity,” the ex Marine saw humanity all around him on that F train in May of 2023 and decided to act.
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