Frustrations from Daniel Penny's defense attorney, Thomas Kenniff, boiled over, leading him to ask the judge for a mistrial because of the way prosecutors were handling their case.

With the jury excused, Kenniff accused prosecutors of painting for the jurors an image of Penny as a "white vigilante" and the judge of letting it happen.

"There is no longer a way that my client can get anything resembling a fair trial," Kenniff told Judge Maxwell Wiley.

It failed to persuade him.

Penny faces manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges in the death of Jordan Neely. He was a homeless man who had been making loud threats in a subway car when Penny put him in a chokehold.

"I think the prosecution is doing a lovely job, actually," Christopher Neely, his uncle, told reporters after the trial. "I think that no matter how much somebody tells a lie, the truth is always going to come out, and that's what happened today."

The unsuccessful call for a mistrial capped off a day of testimony

Prosecutors called to the stand a woman named Caedryn Schrunk, who was in the subway car with Penny and Neely.

Schrunk testified that she thought she was going to die — afraid that Neely may have had a weapon. Neely was unarmed.

Schrunk testified she saw Neely resisting Penny.

Asked on cross-examination if she thought it would have been safe for Penny to let go, she said, "absolutely not."

The district attorney released a 911 call from a teenager at the scene, Moriela Sanchez. She also took the stand.

"He's just trying to attack everybody," Sanchez said of Neely to the 911 operator.

Johnny Grima, a formerly homeless man turned activist who tried to help Neely in the train car by pouring water on his forehead, also testified.

"What happened to Jordan Neely there that day? How he was murdered, you know? He was a vulnerable person," Grima told NY1 outside of the courthouse.

On the witness stand, Grima repeatedly called Penny a murderer.

Penny's defense attorney asked why he didn't do anything if he thought Penny was killing Neely.

"Well," Grima said, "I regret it. Don't get it twisted."

"I regret not being proactive when I walked into that train car," Grima told NY1.

A regret that bothers him to this day.