When Daniel Penny, 25, put his arm around the homeless man’s neck on a Manhattan subway last year, it looked like he was using a non-lethal chokehold that U.S. Marines have been taught for a long time.
Joseph Caballer, a Marine Corps combat instructor who taught Penny different types of holds, says that if you do it right, the move should knock someone out without killing them. If the technique is used for too long, it can stop blood from getting to the brain, killing the person in minutes.
According to Caballer, you should let go once the person is unconscious. He said this to a jury on Thursday.
Penny is on trial for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after putting Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was pretending to be Michael Jackson, in a chokehold that killed him last May. His testimony came weeks into the trial.
Authorities say Penny “went way too far” when he tried to restrain Neely and showed “indifference” toward his life even after he passed out and stopped fighting back.
Penny, an architecture student who had been in the U.S. Marines for four years, told police that he was trying to protect himself and other people on the train from a man who was acting strangely and making mean comments. Neely’s lawyers have talked a lot about his past arrests and how he has had problems with mental illness and drugs.
A witness video of the fight shows Penny with one arm on top of Neely’s head and his bicep pressed across his neck. He held this position for about six minutes, even after Neely stopped moving.
Caballer said that the move, which looks like a “blood choke,” can make a person feel like they are “trying to breathe through a crushed straw.” When he was training, Caballer remembered telling his fellow Marines, “Don’t hold on too tight.” This could actually hurt or kill someone.
When prosecutors asked Caballer if Penny had used the chokehold in a “wrong” way, he said that he had.
Penny’s lawyers say that their client tried to restrain Neely by putting him in a headlock, but that he did not use strong force during the whole interaction.
They don’t believe the city medical examiner’s conclusion that Neely died from being choked, saying that his health problems and drug use could have played a role.
Caballer said that he couldn’t “definitively tell from watching the video how much pressure is actually being applied” when asked by Penny’s lawyer. He did say that Penny seemed to be using a hold that might have stopped blood from getting to Neely’s brain at times.
The witness also said, “He might be cutting off one of the carotid arteries.”
Later that afternoon, Dr. Cynthia Harris, the city medical examiner who looked over Neely’s body, said again that he had died from not getting enough oxygen because he was being choked.
She said in court that “blocking both arteries in both veins could kill a person in a matter of seconds,” but she didn’t go into specifics about how someone would really die.
Judges also saw for the first time Thursday video of Penny showing detectives how to use the chokehold during an interview inside the precinct.
“He had his back to me, so I grabbed him and put him on the ground. He’s still writhing and screaming,” Penny said, adding, “He gets a burst of energy at one point, and I had to hold him a little more steady.”
Harris is likely to be the last witness that prosecutors call in a trial that has split New Yorkers and brought the city’s response to crime and chaos in its subway system into the national spotlight. It’s not clear if Penny will go to court.
Since the killing eighteen months ago, conservatives have praised Penny as a hero who used his military training to look out for his fellow riders. This week, President-elect Donald Trump chose U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general. Gaetz called him a “Subway Superman.”
People from Black Lives Matter have been protesting the trial almost every day. They call Penny a racist vigilante who overreacted to a Black man who was having a mental health episode.
