Daniel Penny for Your Thoughts

New York v. Daniel Penny

By: Matthew Russell Lee

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This is the story of the trial in People of the State of New York versus Daniel Penny, to the closings.

Onto a subway car like this one he got on, a muffin in his jacket pocket wrapped in plastic, a spleen speckled, it would turn out, by sickle cell disease. But that is not what killed him, Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran would say.

Was it an improper blood choke, or the terror he inspired, in a lady from Park Slope with her baby, a Nike brand ambassador on the way to Rucker Park? Even the Bronx school girls said they were frightened, even if one did later drop the dime on the white man. That was prosecutor Jillian Shartrand's doing, to call the victim by his name and the defendant merely the white man.

Of the decedent there was more, not only the mother stuffed in a suitcase but the channeling of Michael Jackson, dreams.

Now to see a man lifeless on the subway's floor, liquids flowing out of his pants, his eyes rolling back -- here in the courtroom, a woman starts to cry and the anonymous jurors look over, a lady in a COVID mask, her eyes suddenly big.
Another woman next to me is typing loudly, two fingers only, stopping to fan herself and shake her head. It is not possible to know if she is for a guilty or not guilty verdict: either way, she doesn't like it.

The defendant sits stiffly straight, not looking at the jurors. A Marine who misapplied the air choke? A racist or a hero or both. The subway door is closing. This is the story to the end.