Tangle - The Daniel Penny verdict.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 14 minutes.

Our interview on the future of Russia and Ukraine.

Over the Thanksgiving break, we interviewed John Sullivan, the deputy secretary of state under President Trump and ambassador to Russia under both Trump and President Biden. Sullivan was in Moscow when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, and he played a leading role in informing U.S. policy at the start of the war. We spoke candidly about his outlook on the conflict, his assessment of Biden’s foreign policy, the challenges President-elect Trump will face, and what the West doesn’t understand about Russia. We’re excited to share the conversation with you. You can listen to a free preview here, and podcast members can listen to the full interview here.

Quick hits.

1. Mohammed al-Bashir, the leader of a quasi-government established by the Syrian rebel group that ousted President Bashar al-Assad, was appointed caretaker prime minister of the transitional Syrian government. Bashir said he will hold the position until March 1, 2025. (The appointment) Separately, Israel said it has carried out approximately 480 airstrikes on military targets across Syria following the fall of the Assad regime. On Tuesday, the Israeli military claimed to have destroyed the entire Syrian naval fleet. (The strikes) 
2. The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7% from a year ago and rose 0.3% from the previous month, with shelter costs driving a significant portion of the increase. (The report)
3. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testified in his corruption trial in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he is accused of providing benefits in exchange for favorable media coverage. Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli prime minister to testify in trial as a defendant. (The trial) 
4. A wildfire in Malibu, California, grew to 2,850 acres and destroyed at least seven structures, forcing thousands of residents to flee. (The fire)
5. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry demanded that China end its military activity off the nation’s coast, claiming that 90 Chinese ships had been conducting drills near the area since Monday. (The demand)

Today's topic.

The Daniel Penny verdict. On Monday, a Manhattan jury found Marine veteran Daniel Penny, 26, not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless street artist Penny placed in a chokehold on a New York subway car in May of last year. Previously, the more serious manslaughter charge was dismissed after the jury failed to reach a unanimous decision on the count. Penny faced up to 15 years in prison for manslaughter and four years for negligent homicide. Monday’s verdict clears Penny of all criminal charges related to Neely’s death. 

Back up: The encounter between Penny and Neely occurred after Neely boarded an F-line train and began “acting erratically,” according to witnesses. Passengers said Neely was threatening them and insisting that he didn't care if he died or went to jail. Penny then approached Neely from behind and placed him in a chokehold for several minutes while two other passengers helped Penny restrain Neely on the ground. A video of the incident (warning: graphic content) was posted online by an independent journalist.

In May 2023, District Attorney Alvin Bragg decided to bring charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, opting against charging Penny with first-degree homicide. To convict Penny of second-degree manslaughter, the prosecution had to prove that he had acted recklessly in causing Neely’s death. To convict Penny of criminally negligent homicide, the prosecution had to convince the jury that Penny caused Neely’s death and also that his actions were unjustifiable and criminally negligent. 

You can read our past coverage of the case here.

The medical examiner in the case testified that Neely died from compression of the neck, but a forensic pathologist for the defense countered that Neely died due to a combination of factors including Penny’s restraint, Neely’s schizophrenia, his sickle cell trait, and synthetic cannabinoids found in his system after his death.

Dafna Yoran, assistant prosecutor for the Manhattan district’s office, called Penny’s intervention “laudable,” but argued that he was negligent in his application of the chokehold. “You obviously cannot kill someone because they are crazy and ranting and looking menacing,” Yoran said in her closing argument. “No matter what it is that they are saying.”

Immediately following the verdict, Jordan Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, cursed in anger and was forcibly removed from the courtroom. “My son didn't have to go through this. I didn't have to go through this either. It hurts. It really, really hurts," Zachery said amid a group of protestors who had gathered outside the courtroom.

"We couldn't be more pleased that a jury of Danny's peers acquitted him of any wrongdoing. And now New Yorkers can take some comfort in knowing that we can continue to stand up for one another without sacrificing our rights or our freedoms," Penny’s lawyers said in a statement.

Below, we’ll cover what the left and right are saying in reaction to the trial’s outcome. Then, Tangle editor and New York resident Will Kaback gives today’s “My take.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is mixed on the trial’s outcome, but many acknowledge its complexity.
• Some say the case is an indictment of society’s inability to help those in need. 
• Others note the role that public safety concerns played in the trial. 

The New York Daily News editorial board wrote about “the Penny case & mental health law.”

“Daniel Penny has been acquitted of the subway killing of Jordan Neely, but the New York City criminal justice and mental-health-care establishment is guilty of creating the conditions whereby a deeply disturbed man known to be in the throes of psychological crisis wound up melting down on a subway car, hurling threats at passengers,” the board said. “Should Penny, a Marine trained in hand-to-hand combat, really have [been] absolved of any penalties after placing Neely in an asphyxiating chokehold, and keeping him in it even after he was debilitated? From where we sit, it feels wrong to endorse his actions and its consequences.”

“That having been said, we didn’t sit on the jury and didn’t hear all the evidence, so we’re loath to replace our judgment with that of 12 of Penny’s peers who were doing their essential duty. This was a difficult judgment call; Penny did the right thing up to a point, and reasonable minds can disagree about when that point arrived,” the board wrote. “There is no debate, however, that New York is a place where far too many people who need and deserve extensive mental-health treatment — even assertive treatment they never asked for — are rarely if ever going to get it, and that’s a tragedy.”

In USA Today, Sara Pequeño said “Jordan Neely needed help – not a death sentence.”

“People on the right have celebrated Penny, saying he acted to protect the people on the subway. His supporters donated more than $3 million for his legal expenses on a Christian fundraising platform. It completely disregards the fact that Neely was unarmed and in mental distress,” Pequeño wrote. “This case is about more than public safety – it’s about racial justice, homelessness and mental health care. It’s about how our systems fail vulnerable members of our society. It’s about the human being who lost his life, and the ways he was failed while alive.”

“Neely's life mattered. It should not have mattered that he was experiencing homelessness and was in the midst of a mental health crisis. I understand that people do not want to feel uncomfortable on public transportation. I also think Penny, or anyone else on the subway, could have acted in ways to de-escalate the situation that did not involve a choke hold.”

In The New York Times, Ginia Bellafante suggested “in [the] Penny trial, the moment may have mattered as much as the evidence.”

“The verdict — rendered in a case involving a momentary eruption of erratic behavior by an unstable man — suggests the extent to which New Yorkers have lost faith in the prospect of their physical safety,” Bellafante wrote. “The city emerged from the depths of the pandemic with a rise in subway crime marked by a series of terrifying events that began in January 2022, when Michelle Go, a 40-year-old banker, died after she was shoved into the path of an oncoming train at Times Square by someone with psychosis. From that moment through mid-October of the following year, 37 people were pushed off subway platforms, episodes that dominated coverage in the tabloids.”

“Had Mr. Neely died during an encounter with a young white Marine several years earlier it would have been easy to imagine a broad movement forged in his name — a coalition of activists and bourgeois liberals like those who protested the murder of George Floyd,” Bellafante said. “The Neely case has lacked the same fire; the mood seems to have shifted. Many of those same mothers who faced off against a brigade of cops in riot gear now worry about their children on the subways. Outside the courthouse at 100 Centre Street on Tuesday, the final day of closing arguments, the crowd of protesters was small.”

What the right is saying.

• The right celebrates Penny’s acquittal but says he should never have been charged. 
• Some say Penny’s actions in the subway car were those of a Good Samaritan.
• Others criticize the left’s attacks on Penny throughout the case.

The Free Press’s editors argued “a just verdict for Daniel Penny does not erase the cynical, wrongheaded, and unwarranted prosecution.”

“Good for the jury for finding Daniel Penny not guilty. But this does not erase the cynical, wrongheaded, and unwarranted prosecution by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg against a Good Samaritan,” the editors said. “Neely, a homeless man, had been arrested 42 times between 2013 and 2021. Other subway riders at the scene reported feeling terrorized as Neely said he was ‘ready to die.’... When the police questioned Penny, he said that his only intent had been to protect the others in the subway car that morning.

“Yet Bragg threw the book at Penny, charging him with both manslaughter in the second degree…and criminally negligent homicide… The DA’s decision to prosecute Daniel Penny was no anomaly. Bragg’s tenure has been marked by priorities that don’t serve the public, and a nonchalant attitude toward criminal behavior that has all but guaranteed an increase in crime in New York,” the editors wrote. “Bragg has made New York a more dangerous city. What’s more, while ignoring real crime, he has gone after politically convenient targets—like Daniel Penny—generating an enormous amount of cynicism among New Yorkers.”

In USA Today, Nicole Russell called Penny’s acquittal “a victory for justice.”

“Reports on the deadly incident seemed to divide Americans over racial issues: privileged white man versus homeless Black man. But the Penny case also involved questions that have nothing to [do] with skin no-color: What level of threat are we willing to live with? Is it morally right for a bystander to use force to stop a threat,” Russell wrote. “To me, Penny is a hero who intervened to protect people who couldn't protect themselves. The jury was right to acquit him, and the fact he was on trial at all is an outrage.”

“The prosecutor's case looked weak throughout the trial. Despite substantial evidence, including video footage and eyewitness accounts showing that Penny acted heroically, prosecutors still brought the case against him,” Russell said. “When I first saw footage from the subway car, I felt sorrow for Neely, but also relief that men like Penny exist. I've been in dozens of scenarios where I have felt unsafe, and while my safety is my responsibility, I've also found myself at times looking for the nearest Daniel Penny.”

In National Review, Noah Rothman wrote “do not forget Daniel Penny’s tormentors.”

“Penny’s defamers deployed all the emotional blackmail in their arsenals to convince New Yorkers that Neely was a wholly sympathetic victim,” Rothman said. “‘Jordan Neely was murdered,’ said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recklessly dispensing with the presumption of innocence… Congressman Jamaal Bowman agreed with his progressive colleague. Neely was just ‘another black man publicly executed,’ he said. State senator Jabari Brisport apparently thought Bowman was not being hysterical enough. ‘Jordan Neely was lynched,’ he wrote.”

“All of it amounted to an effort to try Daniel Penny in the court of public opinion. Democrats filtered this event through a highly abstract philosophical framework that rendered Neely and Penny one-dimensional caricatures in a grand political drama. That abstraction was unrecognizable to New York City’s subway riders. It certainly didn’t connect with the jury,” Rothman wrote. “In lieu of ‘social justice,’ a New York City courtroom dispensed actual justice on Monday. Surely, city residents will take a measure of solace in this triumph of common sense, even if their elected officials have theorized themselves out of experiencing any solidarity with the city they claim to represent.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Like most New Yorkers, I’ve had some concerning experiences on the subway, so I can empathize with the situation Penny was in.
• Penny might have been negligent with his chokehold, but I have trouble saying he was unjustified.
• I think the justice system worked in this case, and now the city has to respond to the issues that underlied it. 

Some days, when we cover a conflict abroad or a complicated issue outside our immediate area of expertise, the topic at hand can feel distant or hard to grasp. For me, this is not one of those stories. I’ve lived in New York City for years, I’ve ridden the subway countless times, and I know what it’s like to be in a confined public space with someone obviously in the midst of a crisis.

I haven’t always been just a witness to these events. On a handful of occasions, I felt compelled to confront a person acting erratically toward another passenger. In one instance, a man the entire subway car witnessed taking drugs minutes earlier screamed in my face when I stepped between him and a group of elementary-school-aged kids he was accosting. Another time, I was in a nearly empty car late at night with a woman sitting by herself and another man who was yelling at her. When I told him to stop, the guy said he would “fuck me up,” then got off the car at the next stop. Other situations were less confrontational; a group of friends and I helped a clearly inebriated man off the subway after he repeatedly lost his balance and crashed into other passengers. We bought him a bottle of water, he thanked us, and we all went on our way. 

These experiences are all part of living in New York City and have never dissuaded me from taking the subway. I use New York’s public transit system around 10 times a week, and the vast majority of my rides are uneventful. The data backs this up; transit crime has dropped significantly in the past few years, and the total of a few thousand annual arrests aboard the MTA is relatively low for a system with a daily ridership of roughly 3.6 million. 

Still, uncomfortable encounters that don’t quite rise to criminality are commonplace, and the crimes that riders like me witness can loom large in our memories — particularly the random acts of violence or attacks on passengers who are effectively trapped. That could explain why, despite the low overall crime totals, only 45% of riders say they feel safe on the train. 

Like most New Yorkers, my experiences on the subway immediately came to mind when I first learned about Jordan Neely’s death and the circumstances that preceded it. As more details came out — that Neely was severely mentally ill, that Daniel Penny held him in a chokehold for several minutes, that Neely had been aggressively confronting passengers on the train beforehand, that Penny had a military background — I felt increasingly conflicted about the case. 

Watching the video of the incident, I shared many of Isaac’s thoughts from when we first covered the story: The length of the chokehold seemed excessive and reckless, with Penny maintaining his restraint well after the car had cleared. Penny is a physically imposing veteran trained in martial arts, and he should have been able to restrain Neely without killing him. 

On the other hand, Neely instigated a volatile situation that was atypical even for the New York subway. Footage from the immediate aftermath of the incident suggests Neely became aggressive as soon as he entered the train. Here are a few quotes from passengers who police interviewed:

• “He started taking off his sweater… and he threw it. And then he told everyone that he had, like, a rough day and he don’t care what happens today. He don’t care about going to jail, but that someone’s dying today.”
• “He was ready to risk it all basically… He was about to hurt somebody. Threw his jacket on the floor, he’s like, ‘I’m ready to hurt somebody, I’m ready to do this.’” 
• “I think this guy was on drugs because when he came in, he was unbelievably off-the-charts. He scared the living daylights out of everybody.”

Hearing these statements, I started to think Penny’s actions — aggressive as they were — could be legal. Remember, the prosecution had to prove that Penny caused Neely’s death and that he was both not justified and either reckless or criminally negligent. I think his actions could have been justified in the interest of public safety — other passengers felt threatened enough by Neely that they helped Penny restrain him, even after Penny subdued him. 

Watching these videos, it’s hard to buy that Penny was motivated by a desire for vigilante justice, racial animus, or a combination of the two. I think it’s more plausible to say that he was thrust into a situation where he had seconds to choose between taking action or risking his safety and that of others — and that some combination of fear and adrenaline made him hold the headlock more tightly than he realized and for longer than he needed to. 

Morally, Penny’s actions are in a gray area. Legally, the question is whether Penny’s actions were causal, unjustified, and either reckless or negligent. The medical examiner said that Neely died of compressions to the neck. Penny maintained the chokehold after the train had stopped and passengers were able to exit. He kept it applied when another passenger warned him that Neely could die. And he continued to hold it for roughly a minute after Neely went limp (though another passenger who was restraining Neely said Penny “wasn’t squeezing anymore” at that point). Furthermore, Penny’s comments to investigators that Neely was a “crackhead” and “these” were the “guys” who were “pushing people in front of trains” certainly suggest that he had made assumptions about Neely before tackling him.

We can’t know what went through the jurors’ minds as they heard the case, or even see all the evidence they considered, but we know some of the jurors had experienced harassment on the subway themselves. Like me, their experiences were probably front of mind while they considered the testimony. Ultimately, they decided unanimously that Penny’s actions were not criminal.

While my uncertainties about the carelessness of Penny’s actions remain, I think the jury reached the right outcome. That’s not to say that I think Neely deserved to die or that we should accept these outcomes as a normal part of society, but simply that there are too many complicating factors to view Penny’s actions as criminal beyond a reasonable doubt. As an outside observer, I think Penny should have been able to control himself and minimize the risk to Neely’s life, but even ceding that Penny’s chokehold was negligent and that it killed Neely, it’s hard for me to say definitively he was legally not justified. With this in mind, I don’t think sending Penny to prison would have been a just outcome. 

Many on the right are adamant that District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s decision to charge Penny was a miscarriage of justice, while progressives frame this outcome solely through the lens of racial injustice. Both are simply not seeing the whole picture. Penny’s actions resulted in someone dying in public who was unarmed and had not attacked anyone, so he deserved to be charged. Legitimate arguments alleging Penny acted recklessly were brought before a jury, none of which involved allegations of racial bias. Penny was then acquitted after a fair trial. That’s our legal system working.

Of course, broader societal questions underpinning the case remain  — about the way we treat people with mental illness, about public safety, about our duty to our fellow citizens. The response to this case suggests we are failing to address these questions sufficiently. For now, we’ll have to live with the limited resolution that Penny’s acquittal offers. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: What do you think of the message that Casey & Calley Means are trying to spread about the state of American health and how our political systems are impacting it?

— Amy in Ohio

Tangle: I’m very amenable to the message the Means siblings are pitching. 

Every time we write about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I always start out by saying that he makes very real points very convincingly about how our country is in the midst of a number of chronic health crises. I think RFK has a lot of baggage, to say the least, so I’m always dismayed that someone with his issues has become the de facto spokesperson for what ought to be a cause that appeals to everyone.

The Means siblings aren’t without their own baggage — Calley once called administering Covid-19 vaccines to children a “war crime.” However, I think that obvious hyperbole is really the only strike I have against them. The Meanses have argued convincingly that our government and healthcare systems are littered with perverse incentives. I agree. We even published a reader essay about that very topic not too long ago, and I don’t think that’s at all controversial. Even though they’re getting more influence within Trump’s orbit, their messages about promoting a healthy lifestyle instead of seeking medical interventions first would fit in pretty well within a Biden administration that’s tried to pitch food as medicine (Casey has even said she agrees with many of Michelle Obama’s health initiatives).

I think we can actually see a polarization mindset similar to what we have in politics playing out in healthcare right now. On one side are people who hear the kind of message the Means siblings are communicating by saying not only that we’re chronically sick, but that our healthcare systems actually make us sicker. Then on the other side are people who say that our systems are strong, that we should trust our experts, and that any critiques from non-experts are dangerous. 

I really don’t think that you have to go to either extreme to appreciate what Casey and Calley Means are saying.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

American workers are falling behind their counterparts in other industrialized countries, according to the results of a test measuring job readiness and problem solving. The test, which assesses skills like reading a thermometer or planning an itinerary, was given in 31 countries or economic regions; the United States ranked 14th in literacy, 15th in adaptive problem-solving, and 24th in numeracy. Math and problem-solving scores, in particular, were lower among American workers than they were in 2017, when the exam was last administered. “There’s a dwindling middle in the United States in terms of skills,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of a statistical agency at the Education Department. “Over time we’ve seen more adults clustered at the bottom.” The Wall Street Journal has the story.

Numbers.

• 1.15 billion. The approximate number of rides on the New York City subway in 2023, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 
• 1.70 billion. The approximate number of rides on the New York City subway in 2019.
• 38%. The percentage of New York City subway customers who said they felt safe on trains in spring 2022, according to the MTA’s Customers Count Survey. 
• 50%. The percentage of New York City subway customers who said they felt safe on trains in spring 2023. 
• 44%. The percentage of New York City subway customers who say addressing “people behaving erratically” would improve their overall satisfaction with the subway. 
• 1 in 4. The approximate number of adults in New York City who experience a mental health disorder in a given year (roughly equal to the national average), according to a 2024 report from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. 
• 34%. The percentage of adults in New York City with a diagnosed mental health disorder who report having unmet mental health needs. 
• 1%. The percentage of adult New Yorkers who have been diagnosed by a health care professional with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or psychosis.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) retirement.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was The Conspiracy Test.
• Nothing to do with politics: Construction crews discovered a 1,375-year-old pyramid in Mexico.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,358 readers responded to our survey on the end of the Assad regime in Syria with 46% saying the government that follows Assad will be mostly an improvement. “Ever an optimist, while I'm not anticipating a Western-style democracy, I think there will be an effort toward mutual tolerance and a determination not to bring back the violence and brutality of the Assad regime,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Wherever he goes, Josh Parde leaves a butterfly. He began making origami butterflies about a year ago when his mom was undergoing chemotherapy treatments. Parde donates the butterflies to a Cancer Center, a shelter for victims of human trafficking, and gives them as gifts to anyone who could use cheering up. Not only has Parde himself made and distributed origami butterflies, but he has led those in his Scouting troop to do the same. “I’m hoping it spreads,” Parde says. “I’ve learned there is not enough kindness in the world, and I want to add to it.” The Beatrice Daily Sun has the story.

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