A lawyer for Daniel Penny told Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro in an interview on Thursday that accusations of racial bias against the former Marine were utterly “baseless.”
Penny pled not guilty to one count of second-degree manslaughter and one count of negligent homicide on Tuesday after he was accused of killing Jordan Neely, a homeless man with a violent criminal record, on a Manhattan subway train on May 1.
Some in the media seemed to turn the incident into a racial issue because Penny was white and Neely black. Tom Kenniff, a lawyer representing Penny, told Shapiro on his Thursday podcast that it was nothing other than “reckless, vitriolic speculation” to turn the incident on the subway into a racial incident, saying that Penny “doesn’t have any racial animus.”
Kenniff told Shapiro that he had no doubt that Penny would be exonerated. Last month, Penny placed Neely in a chokehold on the floor of a Manhattan subway car to subdue him after witnesses said Neely was making threatening comments toward passengers on board the vehicle.
“We have absolutely no doubt that ultimately our client will be exonerated. But, you know, the law recognizes and we as a people should recognize that the mere act of being the subject of a criminal prosecution, regardless of how it turns out, is a life-altering, traumatizing thing for anyone,” he said.
Neely reportedly said he was ready to go to jail for the rest of his life and was ready to die.
“Anyone who knows anything about the New York criminal justice system knows that there is only one way that one could go to prison for the rest of their life, and that’s to take another life,” Kenniff told The Daily Wire co-founder. “So that’s the environment that my client was in, and this case is all about, you know, what he reasonably perceived and what a person in his situation would have reasonably perceived.”
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Penny was indicted on June 14 after New York officials promised to investigate the incident. The indictment was praised by attorneys for Neely’s family.
A GiveSendGo campaign set up to pay Penny’s legal expenses has already raised more than $2 million. Penny’s next court appearance is set for September 25.