The state of nature on a subway
A jury found that Daniel Penny took responsibility for the safety of his fellow passengers
In December 1984, a New York City electrical engineer named Bernhard Goetz responded to an approach by four young men on a subway car by drawing his gun and shooting them. All four of the youths had police records, which lends some credence to Goetz’s claim that he felt threatened when they asked him for money while smiling. Goetz had earlier been a mugging victim and carried the gun for self-defense.
The case was a national sensation during a time when crime was a major problem in New York. Many people who lived there could readily recall times they’d been threatened and/or robbed. To some, Goetz was an unstable and dangerous man who attempted to murder young men he couldn’t know had previously been in trouble with the law. To others, he was more like a hero who was fed up with being afraid and finally took matters into his own hands.
One notable feature of the trial was that Goetz was white and the young men he shot were black. Notably, however, race was not the focus of the trial. Instead, it was vigilantism and self-defense. In the end, Goetz was acquitted by the jury on all counts other than a gun charge for which he served eight months in prison.
On Monday, almost exactly 40 years after that famous event, a New York jury found young Marine veteran Daniel Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. When Penny and his fellow subway riders encountered the erratic and threatening Jordan Neely in May 2023, it was the former Marine who intervened and attempted to subdue Neely. Penny’s chokehold, which he’d been trained to understand would render another man unconscious, proved fatal.
There were key differences between Goetz and Penny. While Goetz sought to protect himself and had a gun, Penny attempted to protect his fellow passengers with nothing other than his physical abilities. As a strong young man with military training, Penny could afford to look the other way and not intervene. It was far more likely a female or an older person would be a target. Instead, he tried to contain the danger posed by Neely, who had been previously arrested 40 times.
On one occasion, Neely had seriously injured an elderly woman by assaulting her and served time for the offense. While Penny and the other subway riders couldn’t know Neely had a record, the fact adds credibility to their perception of danger. He was clearly disinhibited enough to raise concerns, as some testified in court.
Unlike in the Goetz trial, where prosecutors chose not to risk appealing to bias and prejudice by making much of the racial identity of Goetz and the men he shot, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (also notable for using novel legal theories to target Donald Trump’s business) did emphasize Penny’s status as a white man and Neely’s as a black man. Given that the jury did not convict Penny, it is clear they perceived that there were more salient issues than race involved in the conflict. One was whether they wanted to punish the rare individual who gets involved when a threat appears. Another was whether they could imagine themselves as either a potential protector or someone who needed protection from a raving and threatening man on a subway car with no easy escape.
One of the great contributions of John Locke’s political thought has to do with the idea of the social contract and human beings emerging from the state of nature to form a political society to secure their freedoms. The critical right we yield upon entering that society, Locke argued, is the right to act as a vigilante. Instead, we will expect the government, the courts, and the police to maintain order and to provide the protection and punishments necessary to allow us to live our lives with far less fear and danger than we might otherwise experience.
But in that subway car, Penny was caught in a tragic conundrum. There were no police there to take action. He and the other riders were alone in that closed car with a raving man who seemed to mean them harm. What happened was not glorious. Penny didn’t defeat a supervillain or even a calculating criminal. He prevailed in a struggle with a mentally unstable, troubled, homeless man and accidentally killed him in an attempt to restrain him until the authorities could do their job.
Penny may have made a mistake in his use of force. Maybe he held the chokehold too long. We could second-guess him in a variety of ways. But we weren’t there, and he was. And what Daniel Penny did—the former soldier and therefore maybe more like a policeman than anyone else in the car—was to take responsibility. That’s what the jury saw.
These daily articles have become part of my steady diet. —Barbara
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Of course, that loading area on the platform outside the car is still enclosed in the subway tunnel . . .
A minor correction to Mr. Baker: The incident did not occur in the subway car but in the loading area on the platform outside the car.
In Ericka Andersen's article "How legalizing cannabis has gone wrong", she mentions an increase in the last 25 years of the THC content increasing from 5% to 16%. While this is true of smoking weed, VAPING it is even worse, with a THC content as high as 99%. There has been a recent phenomenon in the last 10 years of increases in psychosis, including schizophrenia and paranoia, due to chronic marijuana use.
Baker is off base…
“Penny didn’t defeat a supervillain or even a calculating criminal.” Calculating has nothing to do with it. Neely had an extensive criminal record, including 42 arrests on charges including 3 unprovoked assaults on women in the subway between 2019 and 2021.
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“What happened was not glorious.” Why not? Penny, a concerned & capable citizen, stood up to a serious threat. He ran to danger, like we want young men to do. He used appropriate & proportional force to neutralize the threat. It’s always glorious to take personal risks to defend others from imminent danger.
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“Penny’s chokehold, which he’d been trained to understand would render another man unconscious, proved fatal.” No. Penny’s chokehold isn’t what killed Neely — he died from the “combined effects” of synthetic marijuana, schizophrenia and other factors, the defense’s medical expert testified Thursday. Dr. Satish Chundru, a forensic pathologist based in Texas, told jurors in Manhattan Supreme Court that Neely’s autopsy records and video of the fatal F train altercation did not show signs typical of known chokehold deaths.
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Last… Locke’s “vigilante” is irrelevant. Hunter has the wrong impression of what people expect from police in the social contract. Police keep order in s very narrow sense of society, but the vast bulk of maintaining order is managed by common citizens w/ common sense, capable of defending themselves & others in a community. Police “respond” to problems… people stop them on the spot.
Case in point @ World today:
https://wng.org/sift/mtg-motorist-death-december-10-1733853327
Scots, how does the swatting at MTG’s house fit in here?
Scots is best ignored. He's a perpetually aggrieved critic of articles here. It comes off like some kind of resentment or major chip on the shoulder.
Gordzilla, I have read his comments for years now, and am willing to hear him out. He often brings good other points to think about, whether or not I agree with him.
Yeah. I agree he does say some good things sometimes, but I find his general demeanor intolerable.
Merry Christmas
It fits in the “police respond to problems” category… poorly sometimes, sadly.
Where does the CEO’s smiling assassin fit in?
Locke’s “vigilante” getting lots of love @ USA.
That’s “the state of nature” on the street.
Also sad.
Law & order is looking up in 2025.
Thank God for justice. Neely's death was a tragedy. But a greater tragedy would have occurred if he had been allowed to hurt more innocent people. Neely chose his fate when he decided to threaten and assault people.
Daniel Penny, and everyone involved, should be grateful for a good jury of his peers, comprised of seven women and five men, including four people of color. They are also the heroes of this story, having weighed the evidence after asking very specific and thoughtful questions. All this case did was increase the chances that the next group of potential victims may not be so fortunate to have someone decide to step in and do what needs to be done.
PTL for Marines!
Any time some says that someone is going to die and acts aggressively, you are no longer in a situation where the normal rules of civilization apply. The rules of self defense apply and any thing you do to end the threat to yourself and others is justified.
The New York Legislature should impeach the prosecutor who brought this case to trial.
Mr. Baker, I appreciate you explaining that difference between the Goetz trial and the Penny trial as it pertains to pointing out the skin color of the victim and defendant. Let's face it, if Neely had been white and Penny black no charge would have even been brought.
I am glad the jury didn't buy into the skin color rhetoric.
We need more men who will step in to protect the vulnerable, and more juries who will accept that if we defund the police, we'll need more heroes, not fewer.
I love Baker's way of understating the obvious. Daniel Penny is a hero.