As of yesterday, jurors finally liberated the heroic former Marine Daniel Penny after his politicized prosecution at the hands of Manhattan’s Soros-backed DA, Alvin Bragg. Thank God.
This was far from a certain outcome. Friday morning, December 6, the jurors told the court they were deadlocked, unable to unanimously agree on the top charge, Count 1, manslaughter. This should’ve been the end of it right there; a verdict condemning Penny for criminally negligent homicide was supposed to only be contingent upon agreeing on Count 1. Nonetheless, Judge Maxwell Riley allowed the prosecution to dismiss Count 1, manslaughter, but keep Count 2 alive, in flat contradiction of the case’s own Verdict Sheet. As New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino observed, “Very unusual and improper…. The judge should have dismissed everything if they deadlocked on the topline charge. He’s basically directing [jurors] to convict [Penny] on something — anything.”
Thank heaven, the jurors didn’t listen to this implicit instruction. They sent Daniel Penny home, vindicated. Nevertheless, the case remains a lightning rod for two big reasons.
First, Penny’s lawyer, Thomas Kenniff, ran and lost to Alvin Bragg in November, 2021. Think of where New York City and the Nation would be if Kenniff was in charge instead of Bragg. From soaring local crime due to his commitment to “social justice”, to using lawfare against Trump, to bringing the case against Penny, Bragg has abused his position countless times. It was poetic justice that Kenniff and Bragg squared off again in this case: a belated victory for Kenniff’s idea of what the rule of law should look like. a
Second, the Penny case is a fork in the road as to which direction American culture is heading under Democrat rule. On May 1, 2023, Penny was on the New York City subway, a well-documented and persistent danger zone thanks in no small part to Alvin Bragg, who has implemented a two-tiered system incentivizing a criminal underclass to overwhelm civilized society. In particular, Bragg downgraded 60% of all felony cases to lesser charges last year.
When Jordan Neely threatened to kill people in that sealed metal underground box, Penny reacted. As he himself put it: “A man stumbled on, he appeared to be on drugs. The doors closed and he ripped his jacket off and violently threw it at the people sitting to my left … He was yelling and the three main threats he repeated over and over were, ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m prepared to go to jail for life. And I’m willing to die’… I was scared for myself but I looked around and I saw women and children. [Neely] was yelling in their faces, saying these threats. I couldn’t just sit still.”
New York City Mayor Adams agreed. “We’re on the subway where we’re hearing someone talking about hurting people, killing people… You have someone on that subway who was responding, doing what we should have done as a city.”
He’s right. Since the start of 2024, arrests in the subway are up 53% compared to last year, including an 83.3% increase in gun arrests, a nearly 80% jump in fare-evasion arrests, and a 24.1% hike in grand larceny arrests, per the New York City government website. The city’s government should be doing something about this. Every law-abiding citizen who rides the subway deserves better.
Unfortunately, the city’s government is the problem. Witness Penny’s prosecutor, Dafna Yoran, who bragged about doing something “that has never been done in her office”, explaining how recently, in another case, she downgraded a felony murder charge because she “felt sorry for the past trauma” that the armed robber endured. Never mind that he killed an elderly man.
Faced with antagonists like this, we should thank God that Penny was found innocent. Equally, we should thank the brave jurors that saw through the sweep of Bragg’s indictment, mired as it was in anti-white racism. This even extended to the trial itself, where assistant DA Jillian Shartrand kept referring to Penny as “the white man.” Nevertheless, while Penny’s victory is a relief, it was a costly victory. The next Penny might hesitate to act due to the inability of raising $2.4 million dollars to mount a defense.
Which is the true disgrace of this case, “not guilty” verdict or no: that a young man who served his country and was trained to protect it was ever so obviously targeted on nakedly racial, sexual, and ideological grounds. That the Democrats could’ve been this feral in their desire to destroy a man who only needed to act because of the problems they created. We can only hope that New Yorkers soon join with the jurors in rejecting their rule and empower those who will clean up the city. I suggest they start with the subway.
This Story originally came from humanevents.com