Political analysts and legal experts respond to an update on the Daniel Penny case

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is trying to “harden” jurors in the Daniel Penny trial to reach a verdict by dismissing the murder charges when they appeared to be closed, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy said.

“Bragg added a charge of reckless imprudence to the case so that the jury would have two charges, increasing the likelihood of a conviction by giving the jury something to compromise on,” McCarthy wrote in the National Review.

The manslaughter charge required prosecutors to prove that Penny acted negligently when he placed mentally ill man Jordan Neely in custody on May 1, 2023. Neely had boarded a subway car while high on drugs, threatening to kill passengers during a mental breakdown. , according to the evidence of the case.

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The judge first ruled that jurors could not discuss the second trial unless they found Penny not guilty of murder for any reason other than that strangulation was justified. However, after jurors ruled against him for the second time, Manhattan District Attorney Dafna Yoran asked for the high-profile case to be dismissed so that the judge could argue the lesser charge of negligent homicide, which carries a maximum penalty of four years in prison.

“Today the judges are there Allen– were charged with trying to convince them to make the decision to count even though they revealed that three days later, they were dead,” McCarthy wrote.

McCarthy said he believed that Bragg’s strategy in the case against Penny was to proceed with two counts, one of involuntary manslaughter and one of negligent homicide, to increase his chances in court.

“Unfortunately, this strategy is working the way it was designed to work,” McCarthy said on Fox News Channel on Friday.

In the National Review, he said the prosecution should never have happened.

“This was not a case of negligence, where Penny could be said to have ignored an obvious risk of death,” he wrote. “There is evidence that Penny removed Neely and put her in a position that would make her breathing easier, she waited for the police to arrive and fully cooperate with them, and she didn’t even know that Neely had died when she wanted to talk to the police and explain what happened — that. I wasn’t trying to hurt Neely, just keep her calm until the police come.”

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Penny, a Marine veteran, is awaiting a jury verdict on a manslaughter case for the 2023 death of Jordan Neely on the New York City subway. (Rashid Umar Abbasi of Fox News Digital)

Some commentators, including Claremont Institute senior fellow Jeremy Carl, reacted with anger to the latest court developments.

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“Kyle Rittenhouse was clearly innocent, but Daniel Penny’s case makes the Kyle Rittenhouse case look like an example of blind justice,” Carl wrote. “He is undoubtedly a hero in every way and his prosecution is an absolute disgrace.”

“I don’t think the left fully understands how much they hurt people when Manzini saved a crowd of people on the subway from a violent, mentally ill man screaming ‘someone is going to die today’ with a demon,” former ” The View” producer Meghan McCain argued. “Daniel Penny didn’t do anything wrong you idiots.”

Fox News’ Michael Ruiz and CB Cotton contributed to this report.

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