‘MAGA will celebrate him’: Daniel Penny found not guilty after chokehold death of Jordan Neely and the internet is enraged

Daniel Penny, the former marine who strangled subway performer Jordan Neely in New York City, has been found not guilty.

Jordan Neely was a well known Michael Jackson impersonator who frequently performed in the city’s subway system. According to subway passengers who saw the incident, Neely began yelling at people while riding the train, saying that he was hungry and thirsty and that no one would care if he died. Neely was then approached by Penny from behind and wrapped him in a chokehold for six minutes until Neely became nonresponsive. Minutes later, Neely died.

Despite there being video and multiple witnesses to the incident, the prosecution were unable to convince a jury to find Penny guilty of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide. As the not guilty verdict was announced, Neely’s father became so emotionally distraught that he had to be escorted out of the room. Users across the internet have responded with an outpouring of rage and grief, with some fearing that Penny’s will become a hero in the eyes of right-wing conservatives.

Kyle Rittenhouse was 18 years old when he brought an automatic weapon across state lines and used it to kill two Black Lives Matter protestors in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020. A former spokesperson for Rittenhouse said that said his ex-client had sent text messages promising to “fucking murder” shoplifters at the scene. Despite being responsible for the shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, Rittenhouse was declared not guilty. The teen’s trial made him a cultural icon in the eyes of many MAGA supporters, who saw him as a hero who was unfairly prosecuted while standing up against crime. Like Rittenhouse, Penny’s was met with an outpouring of support from the right wing, and an online legal defense fund set up for him received over three million dollars in donations.

The People’s City Council, an “abolitionist, anti-capitalist & anti-imperialist” collective in based in Los Angeles didn’t mince words when it came to the Penny verdict. The group showed a video of Neely’s father Andre Zachery’s speaking to a crowd of reporters, saying that he mourns his son and that the justice system “is rigged,” particularly against people of color. The People’s City Council share Mr. Zachery’s point of view, saying that the not guilty verdict against Penny was inevitable as the justice system “was designed to protect white supremacist violence.”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan brings up a painfully familiar thought experiment concerning killings such as these in the United States. If the roles were reversed, he posits, Penny would not be free to walk the streets.

Tragically, America’s history is fraught with “vigilante justice” against Black Americans. Neely’s death is painfully similar to the killing of Daniel Prude, a 41 year old Black man who died of suffocation after police placed a “spit hood” over his head while he was handcuffed on the ground. Prude had a history of mental illness, and was in a state of duress when officers came to the scene. Like Neely, Prude was not with the compassion the NAACP calls for in their post, but callous violence. Representative Summer Lee expressed a similar sentiment to the NAACP, saying that Neely “deserved compassion, not violence.”

Rest in power, Jordan Neely. You deserved so much better.