On-trial Penny feeling lucky
Former Marine Daniel Penny is “confident” he’ll beat the manslaughter charges he faces for killing homeless man Jordan Neely on a New York City subway last May, his attorney told The Post Wednesday — as a Manhattan judge set the trial for Oct. 8.
The proceedings will likely last about four weeks, though could run as long as six, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley said during the hearing.
Penny — who wore a charcoal suit, white shirt and maroon tie — did not offer a comment as he left the courtroom alongside his attorneys.
Defense lawyer Thomas Kenniff said afterward that he thinks it’s “unfortunate this case was brought at all,” but he’s still hoping the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office sees the “inequity in continuing this prosecution.”
Still, the defense team will be “fully prepared to defend our client,” Kenniff said. And he has no doubt Penny will be acquitted.
The former infantry squad leader is similarly assured, the lawyer said.
“Is he happy to be the subject or participant in his own criminal trial? Of course not,” Kenniff said of Penny. “Having said that, he’s handling himself with dignity. He’s as confident as his attorneys are that ultimately, if this case has to go to trial, he will be fully exonerated.”
‘Still suffering’
The lawyer representing the Neely family said outside court his clients are “still suffering” and “still in pain.”
“Justice has not been served yet, but we’re expecting, we’re holding onto the belief that justice will be done in this case,” attorney Lennon Edwards said, adding that the family hopes the public gets a “view of what Daniel Penny really was that day.”
“He was the dangerous one,” the lawyer added. “On that day, Daniel Penny was judge, jury and executioner. And we’re expecting that when this trial starts, he will be facing a judge, a jury and a sentence.”
Kenniff took umbrage at those statements, charging, “It was Jordan Neely that threatened to take life” that day on the train.
“It was Jordan Neely who told a mother and her young child who were cowering behind a stroller that he was ready to go to prison for the rest of his life if he didn’t get to take what he wanted,” he told The Post. “If anybody went in there with the intent to play jury, judge and executioner, it sure as hell wasn’t my client.”
Penny was indicted on charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for the caught-on-camera May 1, 2023, confrontation that left Neely dead on the floor of a Manhattan F train.
Penny’s attorneys had tried to get the case dismissed in October 2023, claiming there were issues with the prosecutors’ instructions to the grand jury and that the city medical examiner never conclusively established that Penny’s actions killed the homeless man during the struggle.
But Wiley batted that away, ruling the examiner’s testimony and Neely’s death certificate were more than enough to “establish that defendant’s actions caused the death of Neely.”