The attorney representing Daniel Penny, the former Marine facing charges over the death of Jordan Neely, who was killed after being placed in a chokehold by Penny on a New York City subway last year, told Newsmax on Thursday that he expects his client will be exonerated.
A judge recently set a trial date of October 8 for Penny, who faces charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
"The trial date, we knew it was coming," Penny's attorney, Thomas Kenniff, said on "National Report." "We didn't know the exact date, we were tracking it and that it would probably be in the fall after the summer after everybody gets back from doing all the things that New Yorkers do in the summer to get out of the city.
"I still hold out hope that that somehow, some way the Manhattan District Attorney's office will realize the injustice of continuing this prosecution and taking this case to trial. It's probably aspirational, which is why myself and our legal team are doing everything we can to prepare to try this case."
Kenniff went on to say that he thinks Penny will be exonerated at trial, saying that although Neely didn't have any weapons on him at the time, and although witnesses say he never actually became physical, he was "threatening" people onboard the train, who described feeling "abject terror, not my words, but the words of the witnesses who have spoken to the police, many of whom who testified under oath in the grand jury in this case."
Kenniff added that it "speaks to the reasonableness of my client's action and interceding, not with a chokehold as it's been described, but really a restrain maneuver to bring Jordan Neely down and contain him until police arrived."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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