Former New York Gov. David Paterson has come out in support of Daniel Penny — claiming the Marine did not commit a crime and should not have been charged with manslaughter in the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely.
Paterson theorized that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg didn’t want to let Penny, 24, loose because of a history of minorities getting killed under controversial circumstances — but said the defendant is not at fault for what the ex-gov deemed an unfortunate tragedy.
“[Penny] did something because he saw danger for other people and tried to prevent it,” the Democrat, New York’s first African-American governor, said Sunday during a chat with John Catsimatidis on the “Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM.
“He did not meet the threshold where you charge someone.”
Paterson pointed out Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, had a long history of mental illness and, while calling his death a “tragedy,” said that it shouldn’t be seen as “an execution.”
“[Penny] put him in a chokehold. He didn’t, apparently, do it in the right way … Because of that [Neely] … was struggling. Two of the passengers helped, and in the process of trying to restrain him, he lost his life, which is a terrible tragedy,” the former governor said.
“But trying to assess this as an execution, or as if it was done by the police rather than a private citizen, is going way beyond what is reasonable under these circumstances.”
The case has polarized the city and the nation, with protesters in New York branding Penny a murderer and calling for his arrest after he was initially questioned by cops and then released without charges in the aftermath of Neely’s death on May 1.
Penny, who placed Neely in the fatal chokehold on an F train in Manhattan after Neely reportedly went on an aggressive rant, turned himself in on a second-degree manslaughter charge Friday and was later released on $100,000 bail.
A “Daniel Penny’s Legal Defund” set up on GoFundMe has raised more than $1.7 million from 37,525 donors as of Sunday.
A Michael Jackson impersonator, Neely suffered for years from mental illness and had a lengthy rap sheet.