CNN
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The defense has rested its case in the trial of Daniel Penny, the former Marine who fatally choked Jordan Neely on the New York subway last year, after four days of witness testimony.

Neely’s cause of death became the focus of the defense’s case in Penny’s manslaughter trialwith a forensic pathologist disputing the prosecution’s argument that Neely died because of the ex-Marine.

The homeless New Yorker died in May 2023 after an encounter with 26-year-old Penny on the New York subway. The case has polarized the city’s residents while raising the larger question of when it is appropriate for a citizen to kill another citizen.

Penny suffocated Neely, 30, after he started shouting at train passengers that he was hungry and thirsty and didn’t care if he died. Penny, who is White, forced Neely, who is Black, onto the floor of the train and restrained him in what prosecutors say became a fatal chokehold. A medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide.

Prosecutors are not trying to prove that Penny intentionally tried to kill Neely. Instead, they claim he went “way too far” by holding Neely by the throat for about six minutes, violating “law and human decency.”

Penny told NYPD detectives she put a man in a headlock to try to detain him until police arrived and didn’t intend to hurt or kill him, according to a video played in court.

In the early days of the defense proceedings, Penny’s lawyers brought character witnesses to the stand who testified about his reputation. In the days that followed, the defense turned to Neely’s medical history and clearly disputed the medical examiner’s determination of the cause of death.

Following closing arguments, a jury of 12 Manhattan residents will decide Penny’s fate. He faces one count each of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

Penny’s attorneys presented six character witnesses in the first two days of their presentation, including family members and men he served with in the U.S. Marines.

Penny served four years in the Marines. He was a green belt in the Navy’s martial arts program, learning several blood chokes designed to cut off blood flow to the brain and render someone unconscious, his martial arts instructor Joseph Caballer testified for the prosecution.

A childhood friend said he was known for being “kind, too kind.” A man who served with Penny in the same battalion said he had a reputation for being “above reproach” and that as Marines they were “taught to value life”.

The defense then turned to Neely and his mental health history. A medical expert for the defense, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Alexander Sasha Bardey, testified that Neely was probably dealing with schizophrenic psychosis when he boarded the subway car last year. Bardey did not meet or examine Neely.

A 50-page extract of Neely’s medical history dating back six years showed the homeless man’s multiple interactions with the city’s health care system over more than a dozen hospitalizations.

In some cases, Neely required medication for his psychosis. In others, he described being hungry and cold. Medical professionals also reported that Neely, sometimes disheveled and unclean, reported hearing voices and having delusions of grandeur. He also said he was afraid people wanted to attack him because they were jealous of him.

The tapes showed that during some hospitalizations, Neely described feeling sad because of the lack of support and family. Hospital staff wrote in their reports that Neely said he was depressed about being homeless. His hospitalizations were sometimes due to K2 abuse, records show.

In a marked contradiction to the official medical examiner’s ruling, a defense medical examiner testified that Penny’s stranglehold did not cause Neely’s death.

“This is not a death by suffocation,” said Dr. Satish Chundru to the jury.

Neely’s death was not consistent with suffocation because he never lost consciousness before he died, he testified, saying instead that Neely died from a combination of factors, including his cell trait sickle cell, schizophrenia, fighting and being held back due to Penny and K2 poisoning.

Dr. Cynthia Harris, a New York City medical examiner who performed Neely’s autopsy, sat in the gallery as Chundru repeatedly hammered home his methods and conclusions about which he testified last week. Harris testified for the prosecution that he had no doubt Neely died from neck compression.

While toxicology found the presence of K2 in Neely’s system, Harris testified that he did not believe the stimulant drug contributed to his death. A synthetic cannabinoid-related death is usually related to a cardiac event that Neely did not experience in his final moments, Harris testified.

She acknowledged she made the decision before the toxicology results came in, but said she didn’t think it was necessary to wait — she wouldn’t have changed her mind if she had “enough fentanyl in her system to take down an elephant,” she said Harris.

In a lengthy cross-examination, the prosecution spent hours trying to discredit Chundru’s conclusion that Neely’s sickle cell crisis was largely to blame for his death.

Chundru said the city medical examiner missed signs of earlier tampering in Neely’s spleen, but Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran disputed that, saying someone in a sickle cell seizure would appear lethargic and short of breath, unlike Neely’s loud and aggressive behavior testified to by subway witnesses.

The jury heard that a medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide, but, for the defense, Judge Maxwell Wiley instructed the jury that homicide, as defined by a medical examiner, “is not an inference that it was committed a crime – you draw that conclusion. or it’s done in a courtroom.”