Just hours after a Manhattan jury acquitted Daniel Penny on Monday of charges of suffocating homeless black man Jordan Neely on an F train last year, Mayor Eric Adams said that Neely “didn’t have to die” but that he respected the jury’s decision.

Adams noted during his weekly off-topic media briefing on Dec. 9 that Neely shares a first name with his own son — Jordan Coleman — to illustrate what he saw as his connection to the incident. He then appeared to attribute Neely’s death to a failing mental health system at both the city and state levels – as Neely suffered from mental illness and had cycled in and out of psychiatric treatment for many years before his death.

“These incidents that are taking place in the city are not only professional in nature but also personal in nature and we take that with us. Jordan didn’t have to die,” Adams said. “A jury of his peers heard the case, saw all the facts, saw all the evidence and made a decision. I join DA (Alvin) Bragg in stating that I respect the process.”

The mayor’s comments came not long after the jury found Penny “not guilty” of involuntary manslaughter.

The jury acquitted Penny of that charge Monday morning after Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed a second and more serious charge of involuntary manslaughter against him on Friday. The judge dismissed that charge because the jury deadlocked on its verdict after more than three days of deliberations.

Penny was on trial for a May 1, 2023 incident — captured in a viral video — in which he placed Neely in a chokehold that the city coroner’s office ruled fatal. He argued that he acted in self-defense because Neely was behaving erratically and threateningly toward the other passengers in the subway car.

The case became a flashpoint that highlighted disparities in race, class and the way those suffering psychiatric episodes on the city’s subways are approached. It also raised the question of whether New Yorkers should preemptively take matters into their own hands if they perceive someone to be a threat.

In the weeks immediately following Neely’s death, Mayor Adams found himself in an uproar over his failure to call for charges against Penny. At that time, Adams gave a long speech in which he called for further structural changes to New York’s mental health system, but in which he did not mention Penny by name.

The mayor also tried to clarify his comments last week that Penny “did what we should have done as a city” in his interaction with Neely.

“We should have stood up for these passengers,” Adams said. “We should have done this for the city. And standing up for these passengers (means addressing the mental health crisis in this city) and not just waiting for incidents to happen. And the decision as to whether he was honest or wrong came before a jury of his peers.”

Adams also pointed out that he doesn’t believe the ruling will encourage more New Yorkers who encounter people they perceive as threats on the subway to take matters into their own hands, as Penny did has done.

“I think people often make these decisions when they’re in the thick of it, and New Yorkers have a desire to help those in need, and New Yorkers have a desire to respond whenever they feel it’s necessary.” he said. “And I don’t think anything will change.”

However, Neil Berry, a leader of the left-wing group Vocal NY, said Adams’ and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s tough anti-crime rhetoric led Penny to put Neely in a stranglehold.

“This is simply a continued failure to recognize Jordan Neely as a human being. Instead of protecting vulnerable people — and Jordan Neely certainly was one — the mayor and governor have created a level of pessimism and fear that encourages vigilantism,” Berry said in a statement. “This decision creates the conditions for this to happen again: for more homeless people or even just noisy children to be shot or killed because they are perceived as a potential threat.”