Why Are So Many People Defending Daniel Penny?

On May 1, Jordan Neely, an unhoused, 30-year-old Black man, was killed by 24-year-old Marine veteran Daniel Penny after Penny placed him in a chokehold in response to Neely’s “erratic” behavior on a subway train. Neely’s autopsy revealed that his death directly resulted from Penny’s chokehold; in response, the Neely family’s lawyer called for criminal charges. On May 12, Penny turned himself in to the New York City police and was arraigned on a single charge of second-degree manslaughter. Penny’s attorney, Lennon Edwards, argued that his client acted in self-defense and that Neely’s death was unforeseeable. Penny didn’t enter a plea during his hearing and was ultimately released on a $100,000 bond.

If convicted, Penny could face a sentence from five to 15 years, which prompted Edwards to pose the question in a May 12 press conference: “Is that enough? Is that enough for someone who choked someone out and took their life?” He added, “He chose to continue that chokehold minute after minute, second after second, until there was no life left. That’s what he chose.”

Several prominent conservative figures have publicly defended Penny. On May 6, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted, “Jordan Neely was a violent criminal who should have been behind bars.” Greene’s attempt to paint Neely as criminal references his 42 arrests over the last ten years. Using Neely’s arrest record to lionize Penny’s actions is in poor taste, to say the least, especially considering Jordan Neely’s history of mental illness, tracing back 16 years to the murder of his mother. Nevertheless, Twitter CEO Elon Musk liked Green’s tweet.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also tweeted his support of Penny, stating in part, “We stand with Good Samaritans like Daniel Penny. Let’s show this Marine… America’s got his back,” while adding a link to Penny’s fund on the site GiveSendGo. And Penny has raised plenty of money thanks to public figures’ support. Conservative podcaster Tim Pool donated $20,000 to Penny’s defense fund, tweeting, “Penny is the Subway Good Samaritan and we are lucky to have brave souls like him who are willing to do the right thing.” Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy donated $10,000, and musician Kid Rock donated $5,000. As of May 17, Daniel Penny’s legal defense fund has over $2.5 million in donations.

The knee-jerk reaction of conservatives to not only rationalize but champion Penny’s violent action as “Good Samaritan-ism” isn’t unprecedented. We saw this phenomenon in 2020 with Kyle Rittenhouse, who was ultimately acquitted after killing two people with an assault rifle at a racial justice protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It’s difficult to ignore the similarities between those who rally around Penny and those who rallied around Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse also raised money for his defense on GiveSendGo, and, in 2021, DeSantis said that Rittenhouse “did what we should want citizens to do in such a situation: step forward to defend the community against mob violence.” Not to be outdone, in 2021, Representative Greene introduced a bill to award Rittenhouse the Congressional Gold Medal for protecting the community of Kenosha.

Supporting Penny, however, ignores the important context that explains how Neely ended up vocalizing his frustrations on the subway. According to the NYPD, the number of 911 calls regarding people suffering from mental illness has steadily risen from 161,268 calls in 2020 to 176,311 in 2022. The number of people experiencing chronic homelessness, like Neely, increased by 16% during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Neely’s frustration with his situation was inappropriately regarded as threatening others. A video recording of Penny’s takedown shows that Neely didn’t attack anyone on the train; he only shouted about being “fed up and hungry” and “tired of having nothing.” “Associating erratic behavior [like Neely’s] with dangerous behavior to me is a cognitive leap,” Josiah Haken, who heads City Relief, a New York City organization that runs mobile outreach stations for unhoused people in the city, told Time on May 9. “That is a direct result of a narrative that we tell in our society about the dangerous Black homeless man.”

It’s also worth considering a rise in the public’s lack of patience for unhoused people. Brian Ourien, the director of communications at The Bowery Mission, which serves homeless people in New York City, told Time that “it feels like these days, there’s less tolerance for people who are having a harder time, people who are living on the margins of our city,” adding that, during the pandemic, there was “a heightened involvement, a heightened engagement, and heightened giving. But postpandemic, all of that has been decreasing, including giving, engagement, and empathy.”

The unhoused, and those managing mental and physical disabilities, are often at the mercy of their own minds and environments, both of which often betray them. Their attempts to advocate for themselves can appear as rants and outbursts. What was likely Neely’s attempt at self-advocacy was interpreted as a threat and was met by an assailant upholding a twisted sense of law and order.

To some, any kind of vigilantism, no matter how grotesque, is always preferable to the slightest form of disturbance. This is a slippery slope, though, because it normalizes any behavior that resembles disturbance — even if it is a reaction to systemic oppression and discrimination — as grounds for drastic intervention. Public outbursts are viewed as public terror.

Still, for some, it’s easier to rally behind Penny for taking matters into his own hands than to show sympathy for Neely, someone whose public desperation seeped out in the wrong subway car. Their interaction is a microcosm of a more insidious system that continues to oppress the voiceless simply out of convenience. However, the system doesn’t just silence; in Neely’s case, his voice was taken away entirely.