Justice For Daniel Penny
Let’s face it: Daniel Penny should’ve never been charged.
The saga of Daniel Penny has finally reached a conclusion. It was exactly what it needed to be.
After his top charge of second-degree manslaughter in the death of Jordan Neely was thrown out last Friday after the jury deadlocked twice on the verdict, the same jury rendered a unanimous “not guilty” verdict on the second, lesser charge of negligent homicide. As we’ll soon discuss, Penny’s ordeal isn’t over - far from it - but he’s at least no longer a prisoner of the state, escaping a bluntly political prosecution.
As you might imagine, protests immediately erupted, with riots still yet to come. However, throughout the entire trial, threats were shouted by the protesters which could be heard from the 13th floor of the courthouse. Under the rule of law, this would’ve constituted jury intimidation, but we don’t live under the rule of law, not in any meaningful sense, anyway.
In addition, Jordan Neely’s father, whom we’ll talk more about later, needed to be removed from court after an outburst of anger at the verdict. In fact, it’s been nothing but threats of violence from supporters of Neely.
Penny’s side of the courtroom erupted in cheers, prompting an angry response from Neely's side, including his father, Andre Zachary, who was escorted out of the courthouse along with several Black Lives Matter leaders after allegedly snapping.
Someone clapped, and Zachary turned and glared, "Are you trying to f---ing get killed?” The man who clapped later told Fox News he did not take the comment as a threat.
Hmm. I most certainly would’ve taken it as a threat. It’s amazing how some people can get away with saying anything. Neely, however, didn’t, proving you can’t go around terrorizing people and not pay a price for it.
While I can understand their anger, I think it’s also true that these people can only speak in the most vile, violent terms:
Neely's father Andre Zachary was escorted out of the room
His partner then told Penny: ‘you're a racist fu****g c**t.’
BLM activist Walter 'Hawk' Newsome, who says he is Neely’s uncle, was also escorted out after he appeared to threaten Penny, saying ‘it’s a small fu***ng world, buddy.’
I can see where Jordan Neely learned his own behavior. That’s not a low blow, either. The apple seldom falls far from the tree.
Since the verdict was announced, it’s been nothing but threats:
Ironically, the case was about whether citizens can take verbal threats seriously enough to take action against the threatening individual. The answer to that question wasn’t fully answered during the trial. But, up until recently anyway, calling for anyone’s death publicly was considered a line too far. Will anything be done about this Black Lives Matter leader? Or does his race protect him? That was certainly the message the prosecution tried to send.
Not surprisingly, there were threats of riots:
I’m going to address this now: I don’t think there will be riots. At least nothing on the scale of the 2020 George Floyd riots. Part of the reason is because of a relative lack of public investment in this case - the whole world isn’t watching this time - along with the fact that I don’t think this case really outraged as many people as the Left would’ve hoped. If there are, however, very few people will come to the defense of the rioters this time. It’s terrible these people think they can threaten and commit acts of violence against the rest of us with impunity, a problem that definitely needs to be addressed, but I also consider it a starkly positive development that these riots not only no longer have the energy they once did, but public support for civil unrest in the name of justice has dropped off a cliff.
Now that the criminal trial is over, we can speak more forthrightly about this entire affair. As you can probably already tell, I have a lot of things I need to get off my chest. Penny’s case is something I’ve spoken about at length since it happened, so I’m not going to adjudicate the whole thing all over again. The verdict was clearly as good an outcome as we could expect. I’ll instead focus on what lessons we can draw from it, along with what this says about our future.
The Process Is The Punishment
Let’s face it: Daniel Penny should’ve never been charged. It was very clear from the outset that Penny took action in response to threats from Jordan Neely. Even if the choke-hold did kill him, it was at least a move proportional to the threat exhibited, considering the totality of circumstances. Again, I’m not trying to adjudicate this case all over again, but once a restraint is applied, it cannot come off until a problematic individual is otherwise secured. Otherwise, what’s the point? All of Penny’s actions were consistent, from a layman’s perspective, of someone who sought only to restrain, not harm.
More on this in a little, but, Penny was assisted by two other passengers - one Black male and one Hispanic male, reflecting the diversity of the city. Often times, when an incident like this occurs, everyone involved ends up getting charged for something. We saw this in the George Floyd case, where all four officers involved were prosecuted, even though only one of them was directly implicated in Floyd’s death. Why, in the case of Neely, only Penny charged? It’s undoubtedly a good thing the other two men weren’t charged, so maybe the more appropriate question is why Penny also wasn’t charged.
In many ways, no conviction was necessary. By putting Penny through an over year-long ordeal to prove his innocence, they’ve already punished Penny. Think of the $100,000 bail he had to post, to say nothing to the legal fees he now owes to his excellent legal team. Think of the terror Penny faced day after day with the prospect of going to prison for 15 years. Incarceration isn’t something any of us are truly prepared for. On top of all that, Neely’s father announced, prior to the verdict’s announcement, he planned to sue Penny for his son’s death.
It’s an utterly shameless move on his part, given he was largely a non-factor in his son’s life until he died and became a cause célèbre for the Black community:
Blood is thicker than water, of course. Nobody can blame a father for stepping forth to represent their son. But claiming to miss his son despite effectively abandoning him, joining into the chorus of how the system is “unjust,” is unbelievably dishonest, dishonorable conduct on his part. Now he’s trying to cash in on his son’s death when he invested literally nothing into his life. Pejoratives sufficient to describe someone like this don’t exist. After dodging prison, Penny must now contend with his livelihood being stripped away from him by a maliciously opportunistic absentee father.
Fortunately, Penny still has plenty in his war chest with which to fight off a civil suit, and maybe even file suits of his own. He absolutely should; against the city, against Neely’s father, maybe against Black Lives Matter. But we can also all agree that it should’ve never come to this. Not only was it a miscarriage of justice, it was a waste of time and resources. Doesn’t everyone have something better to do?
Apparently not. Alvin Bragg, the far-left activist district attorney who chose to file charges against Penny, was apparently able to do so since he barely charges anyone else for crimes, downgrading a staggering 60 percent of felonies to lesser charges. Bragg’s policies so significantly contribute to the disorder in New York City, even someone who works for him became a victim at the hands of a Venezuelan illegal immigrant only weeks ago.
The prosecutor in the courtroom opposing Penny was Dafna Yoran, an Israel-born dual-citizen, who in 2019 implemented what she referred to as “restorative justice,” downgrading charges from murder to manslaughter for a criminal who robbed an 86-year-old man at an ATM and ended up killing him in the process. Typically, a killing which occurs during the commission of a felony is considered murder, a countrywide legal precedent, up until recently, anyway.
Don’t believe any of this? Don’t listen to me; listen to her:
In case you’re wondering, the killer was Black, the victim was Asian. But race doesn’t matter, right? Unless the victim is Black and the killer is White, of course.
The epidemic of activists masquerading as policymakers and prosecutors is a serious problem. Hopefully, we’ll begin to see a turning of a tide soon, because we cannot go on like this. Social engineering isn’t the purpose of the legal system; the purpose of the legal system is to maintain order. This is the true face of anarcho-tyranny’s cruelty: by refusing to deal with someone like Jordan Neely, someone like Daniel Penny was instead forced into an impossible situation: stand idly by? Or step in and deal with a problem before it gets worse? Penny chose to step in and nearly paid for it with his freedom. He may still yet pay for it in the days, months, perhaps years, to come.
This Was Racial Persecution
End of story. Given the facts presented above, there’s no way to argue that it wasn’t. Race may not have been the top consideration - that’s likely to be the Left’s general attitude towards crime - but it was absolutely part of the equation.
Consider the case of Jordan Williams, who killed an assailant in self-defense also on the New York City Subway, an incident which came shortly after the Penny-Neely encounter:
The Queens man who argued he stabbed a subway rider to death in self-defense will avoid prosecution, city officials announced Wednesday.
A grand jury declined to indict Jordan Williams on manslaughter and weapons charged stemming from the June 13 killing on a Brooklyn J train. The 20-year-old had been arrested for the stabbing death of 36-year-old Devictor Quedraogo.
"Our office conducted an impartial and thorough investigation of this tragic case, which included review of multiple videos and interviews with all available witnesses, and that evidence was fairly presented to a grand jury. Today, the charges against Jordan Williams have been dismissed," a statement from the Kings County district attorney spokesperson said.
The stabbing aside, the story is quite similar to what happened leading up to Neely’s death:
Law enforcement sources told NBC New York that Quedraogo had been harassing multiple passengers while acting belligerent and erratic toward others on board. He may have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol, sources said, but a toxicology report will determine if that was the case.
Williams’ girlfriend was one of the people who Quedraogo had been harassing, with an assistant district attorney revealing in court that Williams told Quedraogo to stop harassing his girlfriend and pushed him away.
In addition, Williams at no point was held with bond like Penny was. Perhaps it was appropriate, but it seems as though they determined rather quickly that no charges ought to be filed. That certainly wasn’t the case in other incidents, like the Jose Alba case from 2022, where a bodega clerk was forced to defend himself from an attacker, stabbing and killing him in the process. Yet another Alvin Bragg case, Alba, who was 51 at the time with no criminal history, was held at an astonishing $250,000 bail, which was not only higher than what Penny had to post, but also half of what Bragg had initially demanded!
And yes, once again, Alba’s attacker was also Black. It’s also worth noting Jordan Williams went on to condemn Penny’s actions. Perhaps he just couldn’t see past race to be able to put himself in a White man’s shoes.
Finally, during the trial, prosecutor Dafna Yoran constantly referred to Penny as “the White man” and “murderer.” Along with racializing the case despite no evidence of such animus, Yoran apparently forgot Penny was charged with manslaughter, not murder. This wasn’t a professional prosecution, not by any stretch. It was a racialized political prosecution, and thank goodness the jury didn’t deliver the kill Bragg and Yoran so diabolically sought.
The existence of a two-tiered justice system is undeniable at this point. It exists in New York and across the country at large. All aspects of our government at all levels are heavily influenced by an ideology which promotes a racial caste system with Blacks at the top. What will it take to not only break this system, but to first get Americans to recognize that it exists?
It’ll Get Worse Before It Gets Better
In response to the verdict, the NAACP stated:
The acquittal of Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely has effectively given license for vigilante justice to be waged on the Black community without consequence.
It’s a painful reminder of the inequities in our justice system. Jordan deserved compassion. Instead, he was met with violence.
We stand with his family in calling for accountability.
First, Penny’s actions weren’t “vigilante justice.” It was a response to a threat. Calling his actions vigilantism is the same as saying anyone who tries to defend themselves or others is some rogue crusader, which is a big part of the message they tried sending in prosecuting Penny.
Second, what “inequities” were on display here? Penny was charged and treated like a capital criminal. If anything, it was Neely for whom the justice system showed tremendous compassion towards, too much, in fact.
Consider Neely’s criminal history, which is extensive, especially considering his age:
If you don’t consider Vivek Ramaswamy a reliable source, go look up Neely’s history yourself. It’s not pretty. I suppose an argument could be made that Neely was failed by the system, but only up to a point. Too much is too much. Either a person can conduct themselves in civil society or they can’t. In the case of Neely, the answer was obviously “can’t.”
Geoff Shullenberger responds to a New York City councilmember who falsely claims Neely was denied the care he needed:
After he assaulted a woman, Jordan Neely was given a “restorative,” “decarceral” sentence of treatment rather than punishment. He got “stable housing and health care” as part of that. He chose to leave.
The persistent denial of these basic facts by progressives is discrediting.
So many of the claims made by those who believe Neely was the real victim can be easily discredited or at least undermined. It’s obvious the real injustice was done to the public, who had to tolerate Neely for years, and to Penny, who was faced with the impossible choice of either standing idly by while Neely terrorized commuters or stopping a threat.
Which brings us back full circle to the NAACP’s assertion, along with that of others, that the verdict has given “license for vigilante justice to be waged on the Black community without consequence.”
Leaving aside the Black activist community’s propensity for inflammatory theatrics, ask yourself: after what Penny just endured, would you dare intervene in a violent situation? At the risk of sounding like a coward, I’d think twice. Once more, the process is the punishment. Even if I’m cleared of all charges, my life would never be the same again. A part of me would die in that moment, with the incident forever a part of my life’s story, my name and person now a matter of public record. To say nothing of the turmoil it’d all put my loved ones through.
License for vigilante justice against Blacks? No such thing will happen. Expect even fewer people to confront the Neelys of the world. Worse, I’d expect even worse to come out of this. Criminals, predators, and social terrorists all over will lash out even harder as they realize public sentiment has turned decisively against them. With no one willing to step forth to meet the threat, there will be many more victims. You can count on it.
If you think otherwise, consider that the crime rate in New York City didn’t peak until seven years after the Bernhard Goetz incident of 1984. Conventional wisdom holds that once the public starts fighting back, criminals become deterred, but this is seldom the case. The criminal cannot afford to lose. Moreover, if the state is enabling criminals and prosecuting citizens who take matters into their own hands, the public is incentivized to stand down and the criminals are further emboldened.
This means there’s no end to incidents like this:
Remember this incident?
These incidents demonstrate why Penny wasn’t wrong to restrain Neely in response to verbal threats. You can argue all night long that Neely hadn’t actually gotten physically violent, but these incidents display what happens when you don’t take threats seriously the first time. The sample size is much too large, the results much too consistent, to claim otherwise. The only way to prevent women and other uniquely vulnerable people is to stop them before they strike. There’s no other way.
Do we have the will for that? I’m not sure, not under the existing legal framework.
‘Black Lives Matter’ Is Dead
Four years after the slogan-turned-activist movement came to dominate every aspect of our society, Black Lives Matter, or BLM, is effectively no more. Yes, they still exist and were ever-present during the Penny trial. But as a social force? Their fire has gone out. None too soon.
In fact, you barely heard their name mentioned in the media. I have to confess that I don’t watch mainstream media, but we live in a world where if the Regime wants to propagate something, it’ll show up on your feed, eventually. I didn’t see BLM activists showing up on major programming, we didn’t see athletes taking the knee, we didn’t even see entertainers talk about it.
We can speculate forever on why this happened. I think their message simply didn’t align with reality. I also think their tactics and rhetoric were deeply alienating, utterly hostile in many cases. Whatever the case may be, the BLM platform didn’t resonate with the public beyond 2020.
Then there’s the matter of their finances, further speaking to the integrity of the movement. Last year, it was reported that BLM had a deficit of several millions of dollars, despite the lavish amount of donations and funding received in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Back in 2022, grassroots elements of BLM filed a lawsuit against the larger BLM entity, alleging financial misconduct. Then there was the scandal concerning a $6 million Los Angeles mansion, purchased in 2020 using the organization’s budget, and used the property for personal, not professional, affairs.
Penny’s trial captured public attention because it dramatically emblematized this critical cultural faultline. Most immediately, it symbolized a recurrent theme in New York City about the failures of law enforcement, and the appropriate response to criminality. But it was also a story that the Left sought to turn into a racial morality play by repeating the BLM playbook they applied to the death of George Floyd, to Trayvon Martin, to Michael Brown and countless others.
And:
Today’s verdict marks the end of an era. BLM, which seemed unstoppable four years ago, is finished. Its activists are discredited, and its grip on the public imagination is broken. No doubt the violent spirit of the movement will seek to resurface in the future, but a brutal and stupid decade of moral and judicial corruption has come to a close.
BLM may not be financially bankrupt. They are, without a doubt, morally bankrupt. Good riddance.
“Racism” Is Still The Highest Crime Of The Land
By this point in the essay, I’m hoping everyone understands that while the verdict should be celebrated, it is, in the grand scheme of things, a small victory. In other words, we’ve won the battle, but we’ve yet to win the war. There are many, many more fights to win before the tide begins to turn.
One of the fights we’ve still yet to win is the one where our society quits treating racism as a crime worse than murder and rape. As explained earlier, the real reason Penny was put on trial and treated the way he was is because he was White and Neely was Black. In other words, Penny was being charged with killing a Black man, above all else. That’s not a real crime, of course - if you kill someone, it’s supposed to be a big deal regardless of the race of the perpetrator and victim - but every society has “symbolic” crimes alongside legal ones. These are crimes a person is charged with because they offend our sensibilities or popularly-held values.
But at no point did the prosecution provide any evidence Penny was either a racist or that his actions were racially motivated. One of the more remarkable things about this case was how the prosecution didn’t find much of anything with which they could undermine Penny’s character. Even Kyle Rittenhouse, who was absolutely acting in self-defense, had social media posts which were problematic. George Zimmerman had a checkered past. Nothing about Penny. He was as squeaky clean a defendant as it gets, and he was nearly sent to prison.
Even if he wasn’t, an unjust killing is an unjust killing. It doesn’t become worse because it was racially motivated. One of worst things to come out of what Christopher Rufo called the “brutal and stupid decade of moral and judicial corruption” is the elevation of racism as the worst transgression a person can commit. There’s no denying that the average armed robber, murderer, or general social predator gets nowhere near the level of social condemnation as someone accused of racism, which is entirely a thought-crime.
Even if nobody can go to prison for racism (not so in the UK and Germany, by the way), society has come up with other ways of punished the so-called racists. This is primarily done through “un-personing,” where an accused individual is basically removed from participating in civil society: they’re fired from jobs, their bank accounts shut down, and threats and intimidation coming flying in from all corners. Since there’s no due process involved, the accusation amounts to a conviction, one which cannot be overturned even when exonerated. This is the very essence of what commentators like
have long-described as a “soft totalitarianism.”The story of how we got here is long and windy. For now, it’s enough to say it has its roots in the civil rights era of the mid-20th century. The civil rights movement has become sacrosanct in American history, a “second founding” of sorts, one more sacrosanct than the first, but I think it’s past due for a more critical examination. Why?
Because it leads to stuff like Amazon being currently sued for limiting deliveries to certain zip codes in Washington, D.C. These zip codes happen to be high-crime areas, and are also Black neighborhoods. An argument can be made that Amazon isn’t holding up its end of the Prime membership while charging full price for its membership, but expecting them to provide the same quality of service to a dangerous neighborhood as it would to a safe neighborhood is preposterous, an argument which could only have merit under the Civil Rights Act.
What’s the message being sent? The same people who just tried to destroy Daniel Penny for standing up to a dangerous individual are the exact same people who would tell defenseless delivery drivers to enter dangerous neighborhoods or lose their jobs. Thousands of Americans daily are expected to assume unreasonable levels of risk to their safety in exchange for a paycheck. Having people put themselves in danger to service crime-ridden neighborhoods is a civil right too, apparently. Deliver that package, bigot, unless you want to be fired and un-personed!
At some point, America will need to have a more open and honest conversation about the practical legacy of the civil rights movement. I think we can all agree that nobody should be judged for their race alone, while also agreeing that right doesn’t extend to others sacrificing their lives, money, and property in the name of “equity” for one group. I’m not quite at the point of overturning the Civil Rights Act just yet - not entirely - but we’re going to have to scrutinize the parts of it which leads to lawsuits like the one filed against Amazon. This may mean curtailing huge parts of it. The Overton window has yet to shift that far, however.
On that note…
The Overton Window Is Shifting
There’s no question we’re not only a very different country today than we were in 2020, but even from 2023.
From Brianna Wu:
In a later post, she says:
The reason I'm willing to speak so strongly in support of Daniel Penny is that ignoring it just continues this dead progressive playbook that is WRECKING blue states, including my own.
They say it wasn't the man’s fault for being mentally ill and that he should have access to free health care? Actually, after a previous assault - he agreed to say in a facility for free. And just walked out after 13 days.
Y’all talk about Daniel Penny using a chokehold as say police don't use it? Police have handcuffs, and pepper spray and tasers and guns and partners. Penny is just a civilian stepping in. RIDICULOUS ARGUMENT.
But more than that, it's this insistence that we ignore common sense. As if the population of America is supposed to let a man scream death threats at us because it could upset some activist somewhere in America.
Normal people are exhausted with this shit. It's why Trump is president. If we want the Democrats to win again, we need to come back to the reality the people we say we represent are living in.
For anyone who might be unfamiliar, Brianna Wu is a progressive who was recently very active in the Democratic Party, and is a transgender to top it all. To imagine someone like this saying what she says there was unthinkable a year ago.
If the New York Times comments section serves as an indication of what the silent majority of New Yorkers think about the verdict, most are in agreement:
Here’s one more liberal commenting on the case:
Long story short: crime appears to becoming a less partisan issue. This can only be a good thing. If a society cannot even agree that crime is bad and needs to be dealt with swiftly and decisively, society has lost it’s way. We were very much on the road to finding out what happens then.
There’s currently major political realignment underway. Without getting too ahead of ourselves, if both the Right and elements of the Left can agree we cannot have a peaceful society while indulging criminality in the name of suicidal empathy, a term coined by Gad Saad, that as good a start as any.
Remember Who Our Real Heroes Are
There’s a saying: remember them not for how they died, but for how they lived.
Well, this is how Jordan Neely lived, even while doing his Michael Jackson bit [WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT]:
If this wasn’t all he was, this was certainly a big part of who he was, given his overall history. Not so long ago, our society chose to elevate people like him as not only victims, but as heroic figures worthy of our admiration. At the risk of understating it, this needs to stop.
Contrast him with Daniel Penny. Listen to him discuss his ordeal:
JUST IN: Daniel Penny says he has zero regrets, says he couldn't live with the guilt if someone was hurt on the subway by Jordan Neely.
Penny is an even better person than I thought.
The Marine said he would do a million court appearances if it meant saving someone on the subway.
“I’m not a confrontational person... this type of [interview] is very uncomfortable. All this attention and limelight is very uncomfortable. I would prefer without it.”
“I didn’t want any type of attention or praise or. And I still don’t.”
“The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself.”
“I’ll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.”
Penny is someone who genuinely believes in a fate worse than death. That fate would be to live as a coward. People like Penny wouldn’t call themselves heroes, but they are. We cannot have a country without such people. We can never be as nice as Japan, as long as we’re in denial about the fact that safety starts with brave men willing to do violence on our behalf.
The further away we get from the realities of violence, the more we forget: bravery and heroism aren’t clean like in the movies. It’s awkward, as in the case of Henri d’Anselme, the Frenchman who stopped a vicious knife attack in June 2023, or messy, in the case of Penny. This is why not all of us are fit for the duty of protecting others. This is why we need Daniel Penny. As I noted while discussing d’Anselme’s heroism:
bravery exists in our hearts; you cannot fake it and, when forced to show it, you and everyone else are seeing what you’re truly made of.
I choose to reserve my sympathy for our heroes. Not for the predators. I celebrate the life of Daniel Penny, and I shed no tears for the death of Jordan Neely.
Last word goes to Gad Saad, who gives a brief evolutionary take on the significance of Penny’s vindication:
What do you think? Was the outcome the best we could’ve hoped for? Was any kind of justice served? Do you also sense a major “vibe” shift in our society with respect to our attitude towards criminality and disorder?
Talk about it in the comments section.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
If you liked this post from We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here, why not share? If you’re a first-time visitor, please consider subscribing!
"Penny is someone who genuinely believes in a fate worse than death. That fate would be to live as a coward." There's a word for that: honor. The Marines tend to appeal to people who value honor.
I wonder if a state could alter its tort laws to make civil action against someone who has been declared innocent of a crime summarily impossible. I think this would be a worthwhile change. If the DA charges you and fails to convict, you are innocent as a matter of law.
The saga of Daniel Penny definitely has NOT reached a conclusion. The process is the punishment, and they achieved that blatantly & with a vengeance. The (first) civil suit has already been filed. It won't be over until the judicial houses are cleaned out like the Aegean stables.