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The negligent homicide charge Daniel Penny faces today as the jury reconvenes is a face-saving measure for a farce, the last-ditch effort for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to please a small number of progressive agitators with a trial that should never have been brought.
On Friday, the jury twice said it could not come to a consensus on the top charge of manslaughter. That should have been the end of it, as the defense called for a mistrial.
But Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran decided they should just simply drop manslaughter, so they can move on to the second, lesser charge.
Judge Maxwell Wiley agreed with prosecutors and, poof, the more serious charge — which came with the possibility of 15 years behind bars — disappeared.
Dropping the manslaughter charge was all the more shocking because Yoran fought in the mud for it. She grossly smeared Penny, saying he lied to police and never showed “any remorse.”
He didn’t “recognize [Neely’s] humanity,” she claimed.
Nonsense. Penny wasn’t some reckless hothead looking for trouble. He stuck around and volunteered to speak to police, telling them he didn’t mean to hurt Neely.
Left’s deluded diatribe
Meanwhile, outside of the courthouse, BLM leader Hawk Newsome comically declared: “The KKK got another victory.” In Manhattan, no less.
“Racism has its tentacles all over this case and all over the minds of white America” and anyone who thinks Penny is innocent is a racist.
Newsome’s white supremacist fantasy was met with the unbridled enthusiasm of three people clapping.
The dozen or so protesters who stood outside during the grueling monthlong trial seemed to dwindle each day.
Also gone are the mouthy politicians, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gov. Hochul.
Since the incident, AOC has banged the drum to charge Penny and tweeted that “Jordan Neely was murdered.”
She attended Neely’s funeral, where she shamelessly took selfies with attendees and said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who called Penny a good Samaritan, should “read the Bible.”
Why so quiet now? Because she never saw Neely as a victim but a vehicle to bolster her “Squad” bona fides.
Hochul, back in May 2023, said she was “pleased the DA was looking into it,” adding that there must be “consequences.” She’s quiet now, too.
These opportunists are being smacked with the reality that Penny’s trial has shown, that the left-wing narrative about him was wrong — and damaging.
But it’s clear that woke fever has broken. After a decade of lunacy and race grifting that captured both government institutions and corporate America — common sense is returning.
What was sold by much of the media in May 2023 as a white vigilante killing a homeless black Michael Jackson impersonator is now viewed in late 2024 for what it really is: an act of uncommon selflessness on the part of Penny.
The Marine veteran stood up to protect innocent straphangers from a drug-addled man with a history of random violence on the subway.
Righting a legal wrong
In the courtroom, New Yorkers of all races testified that Neely scared them unlike any other subway aggressor. One older black woman told the jury that she said “thank you” to Penny for his actions, even giving him a slight smile on the stand.
It was very clear that Penny should not have been charged, but Bragg can’t give it up. By including the lesser charge, the DA surely hopes to get his pound of flesh. Maybe the jury will feel more comfortable to convict Penny on the lesser charge because it carries only probation or up to four years in prison.
But the only true justice will result in Penny walking free.
And our leaders understanding that they must act to restore our city’s safety, that they so stupidly squandered in the name of far-left activism.