Two days ago (December 9), Daniel Penny, on trial in New York City after being charged with the murder of a black homeless man (criminally negligent homicide and second degree manslaughter) on a NYC subway train last year, was found not guilty on the second lesser charge by the jury who had heard the case. The initial, more serious, charge was dismissed by the judge the previous Friday after the jury could not reach a verdict. CBS News provided a fairly good summary of the end of the trial including statements on the verdict by NYC District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted the case, and the city’s mayor Eric Adams.
The exoneration of Penny came as a surprise to most observers of the proceedings, who expected that another NYC jury — like the one that convicted Donald Trump of trumped up charges last May — would come down hard on Penny, a white person accused of killing a black homeless man who was acting up and threatening passengers with bodily harm during a NYC subway ride.
On May 1, 2023, in New York City, Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless American man, died after being put in a chokehold by Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old United States Marine Corps veteran. Penny was found not guilty of a charge of criminally negligent homicide in relation to Neely’s death, while a charge of second-degree manslaughter was dismissed. Neely’s death prompted protests and a broader debate around the propriety of Penny’s actions.
Other than the voluntary interview that Penny gave to NYC police shortly after the incident and before he was formally charged with Neely’s death, the defendant had not been heard from since then. He did not take the witness stand during his trial.
The first interview with Penny was secured by FOX News’s Judge Jeanine Pirro, a co-host of the channel’s most highly-rated program, The Five.
The full interview will be released online later today on FOX News’s subscription channel, FOX Nation.
On Tuesday, two FOX News prime time programs, Jesse Watters Primetime and Hannity, previewed clips of the Pirro-Penny interview. These are the first times that Penny has gone on the record and been seen or heard from since May 2023.
Transcripts provided by FOX News Media follow. Video of this clip can be viewed here.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Daniel Penny breaking his silence in an exclusive interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro. That’s going to be streaming tomorrow on FOX Nation just one day after a jury in Manhattan cleared him in the subway choke hold death of Jordan Neely.
The former Marine revealing what was racing through his mind in the moments when he was on the subway floor, subduing Neely, a schizophrenic homeless man who was high on K2 and railing violently at passengers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANIEL PENNY, ACQUITTED: He was just threatening to kill people. He was threatening to go to jail forever, go to jail for the rest of his life. And now, where I’m on the ground with him, I’m on my back in a very vulnerable position.
If I just would have let go, now he turns.
JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Why is that a vulnerable position?
PENNY: Well, he — if I just let him go, I’m on my back now. He can just turn around and start doing what he said to me. So...
PIRRO: Killing.
PENNY: Killing, hurting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: The former Marine enduring years of vicious left-wing attacks, who vilified him as a racist, but Penny has no regrets. And here’s why.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PIRRO: What in you caused you to want to get involved?
PENNY: I mean, I’m not a confrontational person. I don’t really extend myself. I think this type of thing is very uncomfortable. All this attention and limelight is very uncomfortable.
And I would prefer without it. I didn’t want any type of attention or praise, or — and I still don’t. The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, would never be able to live with myself.
And I will take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Daniel Penny also sending a message to liberal city leaders, whose policies led to what happened on that subway. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PENNY: These public officials would do something so self-serving.
PIRRO: But how does it serve them to hurt you?
PENNY: Just political gain. I mean, these are their policies that are — and I don’t mean to get political. I don’t really want to make any enemies really, although I guess I have already.
But, I mean, these are their policies that have clearly not worked, that the people, the general population are not in support of. Yet their egos are too big just to admit — admit that they’re wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Daniel Penny during his interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro, FOX News Nation, December 10, 2024. Screenshot by Peter B. Chowka used by permission of FOX News Media.
An hour later last night, at 9 PM ET, Sean Hannity previewed an additional excerpt of the Pirro-Penny interview.
DANIEL PENNY: Just very aggressively kind of like ran on and stumbled on. As New Yorkers you kind of come to accept that is unfortunately a normal occurrence.
JUDGE PIRRO: And what was he saying? What was he doing? What drew your attention to him?
DANIEL PENNY: Well you know I noticed him at first when he came on you know and the doors closed and as soon as the doors closed, he was carrying a jacket, and he whipped the jacket down, and it landed on the feet — I was standing and — it landed on the feet of the passenger sitting down next to me. And the zipper made a very audible noise and it was very loud and very aggressive. At that point the train car went completely silent. It felt like a vacuum. And there was like this hollow feeling and that’s when I first kind of gave him my full attention.
JUDGE PIRRO: OK so the train becomes silent. What if anything does he say?
DANIEL PENNY: You know he first comes on and he starts demanding things. He’s demanding three different things. Certain types of food, certain types of drinks. Some type of fast food. And that he was willing to go to jail forever if he didn’t get these things. And then it kind of escalated. He was saying — he repeated ‘I was going to go to jail for life, I’m willing to hurt people, I’m willing to kill people, I’m going to kill people and — keep in mind this is all within fifteen seconds of him getting on the train and it was this escalation of violence and threatening behavior. It was pretty serious.
JUDGE PIRRO: When he said he was willing to kill people, did you believe him?
DANIEL PENNY: Yeah. Totally. You know because there’s outbursts on the train all the time unfortunately in New York City there’s always people coming on and talking crazy and this was unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced and it was very serious. I completely believed what he was saying.
JUDGE PIRRO: OK so what was the reaction by the fellow subway riders?
DANIEL PENNY: Like I said when there was that silence, there was that vacuum, I mean he got everybody’s attention.
JUDGE PIRRO: How close was he to the people as he was telling them or saying ‘I’m gonna kill someone’?
DANIEL PENNY: He started off in the middle of the train by the pole. And then in that escalation he started to get in people’s faces within a foot of people.
JUDGE PIRRO: There was a woman with a baby in a carriage? What did she do?
DANIEL PENNY: Women. Children. Kids going to school, coming back from school. It was what you’d expect on a normal New York City subway train or subway car. The mother was holding her child and the school kids were protecting themselves or holding each other. People were stuck to their chairs and they felt pinned and I felt pinned, I felt nervous, I felt scared.
Needless to say, not everyone was happy with the jury’s actions in the case of Daniel Penny. KFOX14 in El Paso, TX, for example, reported a story by The National News Desk:
Walter ‘Hawk’ Newsome, cofounder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, called for “Black vigilantes” to act following the ruling in the controversial Daniel Penny case. . .
Newsome, while wearing a jacket that reads ‘Klux Busters,’ condemned the decision during a press conference Friday.
‘We need some Black vigilantes,’ he said. ‘People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us?’
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran investigative journalist who has been working for six decades in a variety of media, both mainstream and alternative. On Saturday, Nov. 16, Peter discussed his recent articles at American Thinker on John B. Wells’s nationally-syndicated radio program Ark Midnight on the Salem Radio Network. Audio of the segment featuring Peter can be listened to at Peter’s YouTube channel here.