The judge in the high-profile case of Daniel Penny dismissed the manslaughter charge against Penny Friday after the jury announced it could not reach a unanimous verdict.
According to the New York Post, Judge Maxwell Wiley issued the ruling at the prosecution’s request after the jury announced it had deadlocked on the charge.
But Penny isn’t out of the woods yet.
Penny still faces a charge of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a mentally troubled man whose threatening behavior on board a New York City subway in May 2023 led to a confrontation with Penny that ended with Neely dead.
The jury will return to deliberations on that charge on Monday, the Post reported.
While this might sound like great news for Penny, some observers weren’t convinced.
National Review legal columnist Andrew McCarthy wrote Friday that the dismissal of the manslaughter case should have been the end of the case.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “added a baseless recklessness charge to the indictment so the jury would have two counts, increasing the odds of conviction by giving the jury something to compromise on,” McCarthy wrote.
“Instead of deciding negligence as the central question, that count was treated as a fallback position for the jurors to have something to pin on Penny — i.e., they could feel good about convicting him of negligence, not because he was guilty but because they had already acquitted him of the more severe recklessness charge.
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“Now, after the jury could not find Penny guilty of recklessness after four days — and how disturbing it is that one or more jurors were apparently in favor of doing so — the judge is letting Bragg remove the recklessness count from the case. It will go down as an acquittal for Penny on that charge, so he is no longer facing a potential 15-year prison term. For the jury, however, it makes the hard work of the last four days pointless …
“This is a disgrace.”
USA Today reported Friday that while the maximum sentence for manslaughter is 15 years, the maximum sentence Penny now faces is four years.
Friday’s development came after the jury announced it could not reach a unanimous verdict on the manslaughter charge, according to the Post.
The jury had been deliberating more than 20 hours since getting the case on Tuesday.
“We move to dismiss the top count of manslaughter in the second degree,” Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said Friday afternoon, according to the Post.
For many critics, the case has highlighted Bragg’s selective enforcement of the law.
While the borough is overrun with criminal behavior, abetted by New York state’s lax bail laws, the Democrat has devoted massive resources to prosecuting former President and President-elect Donald Trump on felony charges.
Likewise, the decision to prosecute Neely has been denounced as a legal system attacking a man for simply standing up for fellow commuters threatened by a clearly deranged individual.
To Bragg critics, Penny is a “hero.”
“I have faith the hero(es) on the jury will pull through for the hero on trial,” one social media user wrote.
“Sad a hero has to fight like this for justice,” wrote another.
But even the negligent homicide charge isn’t Penny’s only legal worry.
On Wednesday, Neely’s estranged father filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court seeking damages from Penny.
The lawsuit does not set a specific amount, but “demands judgment awarding damages in a sum which exceeds the jurisdictional limits of all lower Courts which would otherwise have jurisdiction, and in such sum as a jury may find reasonable, fair, and just, together with interest and the costs and disbursements of this action, and such other and further relief as to this Court seems just and fair.”
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