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Penny Trial: Who Woulda Thunk ‘Self Medicating’ Schizophrenia With Synthetic Pot Was a Bad Thing?
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Penny Trial: Who Woulda Thunk ‘Self Medicating’ Schizophrenia With Synthetic Pot Was a Bad Thing?

By Jim Taft
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Prosecutors in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have done everything inhumanly possible to stack the deck against the young man accused of manslaughter on a New York City subway.

Daniel Penny, as most of you know, is charged in the death of Jordan Neely, the man who had passengers so frightened by his erratic and threatening behavior in their shared subway car that Penny felt he had to do something and subdued the young man with a restraining choke-hold.

Penny was arrested for killing Neely because he “went too far,” according to the DA’s office. A determination they came to after a chorus of racially divisive voices like BLM, AOC, and Al Sharpton, all publicly called it murder and were howling for the DA’s office to act.

…Preventing a violently inclined fellow passenger from attacking anyone else on the train is understandable, even ‘laudable,’ according to the Manhattan DA’s attorney during the trial.

But you can’t go overboard.

Daniel Penny went “way too far” when he put Jordan Neely in a chokehold on a New York City subway train last year until he died, a Manhattan prosecutor told jurors Friday during opening statements in Penny’s manslaughter trial.

Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said that while Penny’s initial intent to protect other passengers from someone he perceived as a threat was laudable, that praise vanished when he continued to hold onto Neely after he had lost consciousness and after the other passengers had safely exited the train car.

The show trial commenced, and the judge seemed inclined to go along with the sham prosecution, even prejudicially allowing prosecutors to repeatedly refer to the defendant as “the white man” when eliciting eyewitness testimony.

On day two of his manslaughter case, Daniel Penny ceased having a name.

He became merely “the white man.”

During the prosecution’s opening statements on Friday, they asked why Penny, 26, did “not see Mr. Neely’s humanity.”

The New York City medical examiner’s testimony was explosive and out of the realm of professional as well, eventually leading to Penny’s attorneys to ask for a mistrial. Watching a video of the chokehold convinced her to call it a homicide. 

The medical examiner who ruled Jordan Neely’s death was a homicide caused by Daniel Penny’s chokehold insisted Friday she’d stand by the ruling — even if it somehow turned out the homeless man had enough drugs in his body “to put down an elephant.”

Video of the fatal subway encounter so convincingly revealed Neely had died from the maneuver that “no toxicology result could have changed my opinion,” Dr. Cynthia Harris, who performed his autopsy, told jurors at Penny’s lightning-rod Manhattan manslaughter trial.

…Harris’ testimony came during cross-examination by Penny’s defense attorneys, who questioned her about initially saying on Neely’s death certificate that his cause of death was “inconclusive.”

The toxicology results weren’t even back yet.

…“After watching it, I had no further questions about how he was dead,” she testified.

Harris said that she reached her conclusion before receiving Neely’s toxicology report.

The report ultimately showed that Neely, who jurors have heard had a history of abusing the synthetic marijuana drug K2, had the drug in his system when he died.

Unbelievable.

One of the prosecution witnesses was Penny’s former Marine Corps martial arts instructor, who at first said Penny had done the chokehold all wrong. But on cross examination and after spending a few minutes looking closely at the incident video, he wound up refuting the prosecutors’ assertions and his initial assessment. It helped bolster the defense case.

…After the video played again, Caballer said that at the start, Penny did not appear to be applying as much pressure as he was at the 1 minute, 43 second mark, when Neely started struggling, and then he relaxed his grip again.

So the prosecution expert, reconsidering the video evidence, says Daniel Penny adjusted his non-lethal hold according to Jordan Neely’s actions and, when less force was required to control Neely, used no more pressure – indeed, relaxed his grip.

Additionally, the judge would not allow any mention of the rumored ‘sweet, gentle Michael Jackson impersonator’ Neely’s many prior arrests into testimony to not prejudice the jury about his state of mind and actions that day.

After three days, the prosecution finally rested, and the defense had its first chance. They brought in character witnesses for Penny – Marine Corps friends, his sister, etc. They painted a picture of a kind, upright, soft spoken young man who held no grudges or prejudices.

…In her testimony Monday, Jacqueline Penny said her brother was a soft-spoken but “always patriotic” striver who followed the other men in the family into the military.

Then the defense introduced Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Bardey, a psychiatric expert who had access to thousands of pages of Jordan Neely’s medical records and holy smokes.

There were serious issues. It had to be shocking for the jury after the picture of ‘gentle’ Neely that was painted by prosecutors. They tried to keep Dr Bardey’s testimony out, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

And remember, when you read this the ‘K2″ they reference was in Neely’s system the day he died per the tardy toxicology report.

…Bardey reviewed thousands of pages of Neely’s medical and psychiatric records, which he said detailed more than a dozen hospital stays between 2015 and 2021. During that time, he said, Neely often experienced paranoia and delusions. Sometimes Neely was afraid that hospital staff wanted to hurt him, while other times he had grandiose delusions that the rapper Tupac Shakur was instructing him to “change the world,” according to medical records referenced in court and shared with Gothamist.

“He is caught in his own head, and that is what’s driving his behavior,” Bardey said.

Before trial, prosecutors urged the judge not to allow the defense to share Neely’s psychiatric records with the jury. They said in pre-trial court papers that the defense was attempting to “smear” Neely’s character “so that the jury will devalue his life.” Penny’s attorneys have described Neely as “seething,” “psychotic” and “not in his right mind that day.” They told jurors during opening statements that Neely’s behavior was so “threatening” that Penny had no choice but to restrain him.

On Tuesday, Bardey told jurors about some of the patterns he observed as he read through Neely’s medical records, which he said show Neely was diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, a mental health condition with similar symptoms to schizophrenia that also affects a patient’s moods. He said Neely’s symptoms were exacerbated by his regular use of synthetic cannabinoids, also known as K2, which he said can sometimes cause patients to become psychotic. Even when taken by people who don’t have schizophrenia, he said, synthetic cannabinoids can affect the brain for days or weeks after.

Neely had a severe problem with self-medicating that induced psychosis.

…Bardey said it’s “clear” that Neely’s situation was “complicated by the existence of both schizophrenia and a K2 abuse issue.” Neely had synthetic cannabinoids in his system when he died, the medical examiner who performed his autopsy previously testified. But she said it was unclear exactly when Neely had ingested the drugs or how much.

And Daniel Penny just happened to be the guy who may have saved that train car full of people from an attack…

…like this one.



Read the full article here

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