Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office is aggressively pushing for the media to take note that Marine veteran Daniel Penny will not face a mandatory minimum prison sentence if convicted of second-degree manslaughter at trial, Penny’s lawyers told the judge this week.

The 26-year-old aspiring architect would face a maximum sentence of 15 years behind bars if convicted of Jordan Neely’s death on an F train in Manhattan.

Neely burst into a subway car with women and children, shouting that “someone was going to die today” and warning that he was not afraid of going to prison for life. Penny grabbed him in a chokehold or headlock, threw him to the ground and later died.

“The district attorney’s efforts to leave the jury to speculate on a possible sentence are both inappropriate and misleading,” Penny’s defense attorneys Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. “While it is technically true that these charges do not impose a mandatory minimum, most crimes in New York do. It is also true that the maximum sentence is 15 years in state prison.”

Lead prosecutor Daniel Penny secured a light sentence for a thug who killed an 87-year-old during a bank ATM robbery

Daniel Penny arrives at the Manhattan Supreme Court in New York, NY on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. The jury will continue deliberating his trial on second-degree manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter charges for the 2023 death of Jordan Neely in New York City Subway. (Adam Gray for Fox News Digital)

Penny’s defense has raised concerns throughout the trial that the prosecution is overstepping its bounds and unfairly portraying the altercation as something with racial undertones, even though prosecutors have not alleged a hate crime.

“Furthermore, the persistence with which the District Attorney has sought to obtain a conviction for Mr. Penny strongly suggests that he will advocate for a significant sentence if found guilty,” the attorneys said.

Outside experts said there were some possible explanations for what Bragg’s office called “something factual for the context.”

It is extremely unusual, if not unprecedented, for a prosecutor to use the press to allay public concerns if they are to secure a conviction.

— Danielle Iredale, former lawyer for Bernhard Goetz

“Defense attorneys are prohibited from mentioning possible penalties in court – on the grounds that doing so would be an attempt to arouse the sympathy of jurors, who might then reach a verdict based on anything other than the facts, in other words: ‘He could be guilty, “But 10 years is too much time,” said Danielle Iredale, who previously represented New York City subway mayor Bernhard Goetz in a marijuana case. “There is a hypocrisy in the prosecutor’s messages here. By trying to publicize the fact that there is no statutory minimum sentence, they are essentially saying, ‘A conviction is fine, he can’t go to prison!'”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg arrives at the trial of Daniel Penny after a lunch break at the Manhattan Supreme Criminal Court building in New York City on Monday, December 2, 2024. Closing arguments are scheduled to begin today in Penny’s trial over the 2023 subway death of Jordan Neely. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital) (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)

Daniel Penny’s jury begins deliberations in the Jordan Neely Subway chokehold trial

Goetz was involved in one of New York’s most high-profile self-defense cases. He shot four teenage robbers with an unlicensed pistol, paralyzing one of them. The jury found him not guilty of attempted murder, but he spent several months in prison on illegal firearms charges. Iredale represented him in a low-level pot case in the 2010s that was ultimately dismissed.

“It is extremely unusual, if not unprecedented, for a prosecutor to use the press to allay public concerns in order to secure a conviction,” said Iredale, who is admitted to the bar in New York but is now practicing in San Diego works, told Fox News Digital. “This suggests that the prosecution is aware that public opinion does not support this prosecution. This step backwards raises serious questions about whether prosecutors believe they should have filed charges in the first place.”

Subway shooter Bernhard Goetz enters the Bronx State Supreme Court on April 8, 1996, to testify in the $50 million lawsuit filed by one of the black teenagers he shot who tried to rob him. The subway shooting twelve years earlier made Goetz a symbol of the fight against crime in New York City. (Mark Cardwell/Reuters)

Bragg may be trying to save face after filing a lawsuit against a man many witnesses see as a good Samaritan, according to several legal experts.

TRAIN HERO ALEK SKARLATOS IN DANIEL PENNY TRIAL: “THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU”

“It appears that (the Manhattan district attorney) is finally waking up to the unpopularity and weakness of this case and may be considering asking the judge for a non-jail sentence if convicted,” said Paul Mauro, a former NYPD officer. Inspector using a term to describe punishments that do not include prison time. “And if that was the case, they shouldn’t have started the…case in the first place.”

Jordan Neely is pictured before screening the 2009 Michael Jackson film “This is It” outside the Regal Cinemas on 8th Ave. and 42nd St. in Times Square in New York. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Even New York City Mayor Eric Adams has come out in support of Penny.

“We’re sitting on the subway right now and we’re hearing someone talking about hurting people and killing people,” Adams said on the Nov. 30 episode of “The Rob Astorino Show.” “There’s someone (Penny) on the subway who responded and did what we should have done as a city.”

Bragg may also fear that the judge might impose a lenient sentence, regardless of what his prosecutors ask.

“It could be that the district attorney is trying to prepare people: ‘Hey, there’s a conviction, but you know the judge could give this guy a lenient sentence,'” said Matthew Mangino, the former Lancaster district attorney County. Pennsylvania. “On the other hand, it could be that the trial went in such a way that even the prosecution said that Penny’s act was commendable. He intervened, but he went too far. And perhaps the prosecutor, on their recommendation, will prepare people for a lenient sentence.”

But during her closing argument this week, Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran aggressively portrayed Penny as a man without remorse who didn’t see Neely’s “humanity.” Penny remained at the scene and voluntarily spoke to police, but they did not tell him that Neely was dead.

Prosecutor Dafna Yoran leaves Daniel Penny’s trial at the Manhattan Supreme Criminal Court building in New York City on Monday, December 2, 2024. Both sides began their closing arguments in Penny’s trial over the 2023 subway death of Jordan Neely. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)

DANIEL PENNY PROSECUTOR HOLDS THE RACE CARD AGAIN TO A DEFENSE OBJECTION DESPITE NO CHARGE OF HATE CRIME

“Penny stood there for 10 minutes watching the resuscitation efforts – at no point did Penny say, ‘By the way, how’s that guy?’ Did he make it?'” she told the jury. “The defendant, as kind and compassionate as he may be, appears to have a real blind spot for Mr. Neely.”

When Penny spoke to investigators, he described Neely as an “idiot” and raised concerns about a spate of violent subway crimes leading up to the incident – crimes that progressives under Bragg had downplayed for years.

“He was talking nonsense … but these guys are pushing people in front of trains and stuff,” he told investigators. In the year before Penny met Neely, there were more than 20 subway scuffles.

Daniel Penny sits for a photo in Mineola, New York on Tuesday, June 6, 2023. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)

Just three days earlier, a straphanger on a J train was reportedly stabbed with an ice pick. It was about a month after a PBS reporter suffered a punch on a No. 4 train. A week earlier there was a collision in which the victim crashed into a moving R train and survived.

In this climate of fear, witnesses said they were afraid of Neely, who shouted death threats at them.

Witness Ivette Rosario, a 19-year-old student, testified that Neely screamed that someone was “going to die that day.”

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But Yoran told the jury that Penny was “so reckless with Neely’s life because he didn’t seem to recognize his humanity.”

“He saw him as a person who needed to be eliminated,” she said.

The defendant’s remorse can be a deciding factor in sentencing. But it has less to do with guilt.

“Remorse is a big issue in sentencing,” said Neama Rahmani, a Los Angeles-based trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor. “Judges want to see people who have taken responsibility for their actions. This has no real bearing on guilt or innocence.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.