Criminal defense attorney Ron Kuby on Tuesday criticized the jury's decision to acquit former Marine Daniel Penny of criminally negligent homicide, tying it to a broader historical pattern.
Penny was found not guilty on Monday in the death of Jordan Neely, a Black man he restrained in a chokehold on a subway train last year. Kuby said the trial was a story he's seen play out many times before.
"And it always has the same ending-that is to say a jury composed of mostly white people allowing another white person off the hook for killing an unarmed Black man because other white people found that Black man to be scary," Kuby said during an interview on "Mornings On 1."
The trial focused on the events of May 1, 2023, when Penny held Neely in a chokehold for six minutes after Neely began acting erratically on a subway car.
Penny's defense argued that he acted to protect other passengers, but prosecutors said his response was excessive since Neely was unarmed. Kuby said the jury's decision reflected fear rather than facts.
"When people are afraid, they're willing to sacrifice the lives of other people, so they feel safe. And I want to emphasize feel safe," he said. "Feeling threatened is not the same as being threatened, and that's a distinction the jury … was not going to make when it let Daniel Penny off."
Days before the acquittal, New York County Supreme Court Judge Maxwell Wiley dropped the top charge of manslaughter after the jury failed to reach a consensus. Kuby continued to follow along to see if history would repeat itself.
"It was always clear to me from the beginning that this was going to be a test as to whether New Yorkers had fundamentally changed over the past four decades…or whether they were going to still give in to fear and sacrifice a young, desperate, ill Black man," he said.
Kuby compared Penny's case to the 1984 subway shooting involving Bernhard Goetz, who shot four Black men, including Kuby's client, Darrell Cabey. Goetz was acquitted of attempted murder and convicted of illegal gun possession.
"He was hailed as a hero…white people saw this avenger in Bernie Goetz," Kuby said. "I hope we had changed in the 40 years. But we really haven't."