Daniel Penny's acquittal is no reason to celebrate

About twice a week, I commute to the USA TODAY office in New York City — tap my card to pay the $2.90 subway fare, go through the turnstile, wait on the platform and ride from my corner in Brooklyn to Manhattan. They’re the same steps that more than half of New York City’s workers took to get to work in 2019 – an anomaly for the United States, even among other major cities.

Recently I spent my time on the train thinking about Jordan Neely.

Neely, a 30-year-old former Michael Jackson impersonator, was killed on the floor of an uptown F train in May 2023 after fellow passenger Daniel Penny put him in a chokehold for six minutes. On Monday, a jury acquitted Penny of involuntary manslaughter, days after Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed a charge of second-degree involuntary manslaughter. Penny will walk free.

People on the right have celebrated Penny, saying he acted to protect people on the subway. His supporters donated more than $3 million toward his legal costs on a Christian fundraising platform. This completely ignores the fact that Neely was unarmed and in psychological distress.

“I miss my son,” Andre Zachary, Neely’s father, told reporters outside the courthouse. “My son didn’t have to go through this. I didn’t have to go through that either. It hurts.”

This case is about more than just public safety – it’s about racial justice, homelessness and mental health care. It’s about how our systems are failing vulnerable members of our society. It’s about the person who lost his life and how he failed while he was alive.

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Jordan Neely’s murderer goes free

On May 1, 2023, Neely stuck his hand through the door of a subway train at the Broadway-Lafayette station in Lower Manhattan. He threw away his jacket and began screaming and pacing around the subway car.

“I have no food, I have nothing to drink, I am fed up,” he said, according to a freelance journalist who filmed the events. Penny’s lawyers say the former Marine, who was 24 at the time, heard Neely threatening to kill even though the mother he allegedly said it to didn’t. Neely was unarmed; All he had in the pocket of his hoodie was a muffin.

Within moments, Penny wrestled Neely to the ground and put him in a chokehold. Penny held Neely for almost six minutes, even after he stopped resisting. In one video, a male passenger can be heard asking Penny to let go after Neely defecates herself.

When police interviewed Penny, he described Neely as an “idiot.”

“These guys are pushing people in front of trains and stuff,” Penny told investigators.

The medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide. Defense attorneys say it was also the result of cardiac arrest and a circulatory disorder caused by sickle cell anemia.

Either way, a man is dead because another subway passenger decided to put him in a headlock.

Who was Jordan Neely?

Neely had suffered from mental illness since the age of 14, when his mother was murdered by her boyfriend. He entered the foster care system. In 2013, he ran into trouble with law enforcement. During his life he experienced intermittent homelessness.

Neely’s life mattered. It shouldn’t have mattered that he was homeless and in the midst of a mental health crisis.

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I understand that people don’t want to feel uncomfortable on public transport. I also think that Penny or anyone else on the subway could have acted in a way to de-escalate the situation without resulting in a chokehold.

“If the city just wants this to be a playground for the rich, that is the most dangerous outcome for all of us,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The Cut in an interview about Neely’s death in 2023. “We are all Victims of violence when the value of our lives is measured by our income, our mental health, or our race.”

Handling mental health calls

Neely’s death also shows that the police failed to act in a way that could have saved his life. It raises the question of whether law enforcement, as opposed to first responders or medical professionals, are the best people to respond to mental health calls.

Although they found Neely not breathing when they arrived, officers did not perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and only allowed a few minutes to begin CPR. In testimony, Sgt. Carl Johnson said he did not tell his officers to give Neely mouth-to-mouth for fear they might contract AIDS (which cannot be transmitted through saliva) or another disease.

Instead of being treated like a person in mental health crisis, Neely was treated like a perpetrator. It’s hard not to think about how these moments could have been different if a medical professional had answered the call.

In some New York districts, B-HEARD comes into play. B-HEARD, the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, is a pilot program that dispatches health care workers to 911 mental health calls. As of spring 2021, it has expanded to 31 counties in every county except Staten Island.

This isn’t the only city that has done this: there are more than 100 responders like B-HEARD across the United States.

In fiscal year 2023, they responded to almost 15,000 calls. Despite this, police still respond to 70% of mental health calls in the city.

This is partly due to the size of the program. B-HEARD only operates in 31 of the city’s 77 police stations. The area where Neely’s death occurred is not covered by the program. New York City officials need to address this and continue to expand the program until it is available in every district of the city.

Follow USA TODAY election columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno

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