Expert in NYC subway case: Chokehold killed Jordan Neely

MANHATTAN (CN) — A forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy of Jordan Neely told a Manhattan jury on Friday that she was confident Daniel Penny’s chokehold was the sole cause of Neely’s death.

New York City medical examiner Dr. Cynthia Harris said she concluded Neely died by “compression of the neck.”

“In parentheses, I wrote ‘chokehold,’” Harris testified.

Penny, a 26-year-old Marine Corps veteran, is standing trial for manslaughter after he fatally choked Neely, a 30-year-old homeless Black man who was acting erratically on a New York City subway last year.

Harris’ testimony was lengthy, spanning from Thursday into Friday, and offered some stunning rebukes of the defense’s statement of events. Penny’s attorneys have pointed to the fact that Neely still had a pulse when Penny released the choke as evidence that other factors may have contributed to his death.

But Harris said Friday that a lingering pulse isn’t uncommon in choking victims; in fact, it’s “thoroughly consistent with an asphyxial death.”

“That makes perfect sense because this is an asphyxial death. In an asphyxial death, the brain dies first,” Harris testified. “This is a well-studied and well-recorded phenomenon.”

Harris said she found K2, a synthetic cannabinoid, in Neely’s system when performing the autopsy. But Neely’s death was so inconsistent with that of an overdose that Harris said she didn’t feel she had to wait for a full toxicology report to make her determination.

“No toxicologic result would have changed my opinion,” Harris said, adding that, “he could have come back with enough fentanyl to put down an elephant,” and her ruling would still be the same. 

She added that Neely also had sickle cell trait, a typically benign disease that affects red blood cells. Harris said that Neely’s red blood cells were affected by his sickle cell trait when he died. But that was only because of the lack of oxygen his body took in while Penny was choking him.

“The sickling represents a consequence of the compression of the neck,” she testified.

Graphic images of Neely’s autopsy were displayed in court. One showed scratch marks on Neely’s right shoulder — indicative of Neely’s efforts to “claw” Penny’s arms off him, Harris said. Others showed hemorrhages on multiple dissected structures in Neely’s neck, demonstrating the extent of Penny’s squeeze.

“In order to cause those hemorrhages at least you would need a considerable amount of constrictive squeezing force,” Harris said.

Penny told onlookers and detectives that he wasn’t applying much pressure to Neely’s neck and was only trying to hold him steady.

As the autopsy photos were displayed, Neely’s father Andre Zachary sat in the courtroom gallery with his head down. Neely’s uncle, Christopher Neely, looked on from the row behind.

In the end, Harris said she was 100% confident that Neely’s death was a result of Penny’s chokehold: “It’s my medical opinion that there are no alternative reasonable explanations for Mr. Neely’s death.”

Witnesses describe subway death

Prosecutors spent the past two weeks eliciting testimony from eyewitnesses, first responders and experts who offered a glimpse into the chaos that ensued on May 1, 2023, when Penny came up from behind a shouting Neely on a crowded Manhattan F train and put him in the fatal hold.

“I said … you’re gonna have to let him go because you’re going to kill him,” Brooklyn resident Larry Goodson, who was on the train with Penny and Neely, testified last week.

Jurors saw several videos of the incident, where other onlookers can be heard shouting at Penny to release Neely from his grasp.

“He’s dying, you’ve got to let him go,” one woman can be heard yelling in a video clip.

But eyewitnesses from the train car also painted a frightening picture of Neely as he boarded the train that afternoon. Several testified that Neely forcefully threw his windbreaker to the ground when he entered and immediately started shouting in a fit of apparent rage.

“It was like a satanic belief,” subway rider Caedryn Schrunk testified last week.

Schrunk recalled Neely shouting, “I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if you die. Kill me. Lock me up. I don’t care if I go to jail for life.”

Schrunk and other witnesses from the subway said that Neely was lamenting his lack of food, water and money as he dished out threats to the train car. But no witnesses claimed that Neely made physical contact with any passenger, nor did he approach anyone in particular as he shouted.

Penny told detectives that he “was not trying to kill the guy” when he put Neely in the fatal chokehold, but that he was trying to protect other straphangers. Prosecutors don’t doubt Penny’s intentions, only that he went “way too far” in his bid to subdue Neely.

Harris is the last witness for the prosecutors. She’s slated to return to the witness stand on Monday, when prosecutors are expected to rest their case. 

Penny faces charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

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