(NewsNation) — A grand jury indicted former Marine Daniel Penny in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway last month.
The exact charges of the indictment are expected to be unsealed at Penny’s next arraignment. He was initially charged with manslaughter.
Penny’s attorney, Steve Raiser said while he respects the grand jury’s decision to indict, there has been “no finding of wrongdoing.”
“We’re confident that when a trial jury is tasked with weighing the evidence, they will find Daniel Penny’s actions on that train were fully justified,” Raiser said.
The Neely family called Penny’s indictment “the right result for the wrong he committed.”
“Bottom line- at some point Mr. Penny should have let go before Jordan died. There is no excuse for choking anyone for that long. Any reasonable person knows choking someone for that long will kill them,” the Neely family released in a statement. “Daniel Penny did not have the right to be the judge, jury and executioner.”
The New York Police Department reported that at around 2:30 p.m. on May 1. Neely, 30, known locally as a Michael Jackson impersonator on the subway, boarded the northbound F Train at the Broadway-Lafayette Street/Bleecker Street station in Manhattan and began acting erratically.
Video shows a 24-year-old subway rider — later identified as Penny — and others putting Neely in a chokehold and holding him down. Minutes into the video, Neely appears to stop struggling.
Once officers arrived on the scene, they reported Neely was unconscious. From there, he was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead.
Raiser told “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” on Monday that those on the subway ride feared Neely would kill someone.
“You want to stop the attack from happening, and that was the situation here,” Raiser told Vargas. “There’s a theme throughout everybody’s testimony that has come forward so far that the words that he (Neely) was conveying were that he was going to kill somebody on that train and that he was willing to die,” Raiser said.
In a series of video clips released on Sunday, Penny denied having any intention of taking Neely’s life, and claimed the chokehold was out of self-defense.
Attorney Donte Mills, representing the Neely family, said Penny had “no authority” to place someone in a chokehold.
“He (Penny) knew or should have known that choking him (Neely) for 15 minutes would kill him. I can’t tell you what was in his mind when he approached him. I can’t do that. I wouldn’t try to do it. I’m not going to tell you why,” Mills said during a previous interview on “Dan Abrams Live.”
He continued: “Daniel Penny was not attacked. Daniel Penny was not hit. He wasn’t fighting back. He’s the one who began that fight. He came up from behind Jordan, put him in a chokehold and didn’t let go for 15 minutes.”
The amount of time Neely was held in a chokehold has been debated.
The medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide due to “compression of neck (chokehold).” Penny was initially charged nearly two weeks after Neely’s death.
A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment on the case Wednesday.
