Potential jurors in subway chokehold death trial are asked about their own transit use

NEW YORK (AP) — Potential jurors' own subway-riding experiences came into focus Friday in the case against a white U.S. Marine Corps veteran charged with killing a troubled Black man on a subway train.

No jurors have yet been chosen for the manslaughter trial of Daniel Penny, who put Jordan Neely in a chokehold that, medical examiners said, killed him. But in a Manhattan case that concerns perceptions of safety in the nation's largest subway system, the jury pool so far is full of people with a mix of comfort levels with riding the trains.

Most of the roughly 20 potential panelists who underwent questioning Friday were at least occasional subway riders, and many said they’d seen people have outbursts. Some said the episodes hadn't left them feeling personally threatened or harassed, but several said they had.

One recalled an unsettling subway-riding moment years ago when he and a woman sitting near him were approach by a disheveled man who was upset that she was ignoring him. The prospective juror got off the train, he said, as another man stood up as if poised to intervene.

Another potential jury member said he'd seen things on the subway that made him nervous in recent years. A third said he hadn’t ridden the subway throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and while he wasn't afraid of the underground, he'd “heard of some criminal violence” there.

And after a prosecutor explained that Penny isn’t charged with an intentional killing and asserts he was protecting himself and other subway riders, a fourth prospective juror had had enough.

“This all seems incredibly complicated," he said, and soon after asked to be excused. His request hadn't been decided by the time court broke for the day.

Jury selection is set to continue Monday in the case, which has become a crucible for opinions about public safety, mental illness, the line between intervention and vigilantism, and the role of race in how people perceive all of it.

Some demonstrators have rallied to decry Penny, others to defend him. Some prominent Democratic officials went to Neely’s funeral, while high-profile Republican politicians portrayed Penny as a hero who confronted Neely to protect others. Penny’s legal defense fund has raised millions of dollars.

Prospective members of the anonymous jury were asked whether they or their loved ones had served in the military, taken martial arts or self-defense training, or had problems with drug addiction, mental illness or homelessness.

Neely had once been familiar to some subway riders for his Michael Jackson impersonations. But relatives have said he struggled with mental health problems after his mother was killed and was found stuffed in a suitcase in 2007.

Over the years, Neely became homeless and developed a history of drug use, disruptive behavior and arrests, including a guilty plea to assaulting a stranger in 2021.

On May 1, 2023, Neely boarded a subway and began shouting and acting erratically, witnesses said.

Neely’s family and supporters have said he was only appealing for help, not menacing anyone.

Other passengers differed on whether he was a danger. Some told police he was frightening people by making sudden movements and statements about being willing to die or go to jail. Yet at least one witness described Neely's behavior as “like another day, typically, in New York,” according to a court filing.

Penny, who told officers that Neely threatened "to kill everybody,” put an arm around his neck. With two other riders helping to pin Neely to the floor, the Marine veteran held him around the neck for more than three minutes, until his body went limp.

Penny later told detectives in an interview that he was “just trying to de-escalate,” not to injure or kill Neely.

City medical examiners determined that he died from compression of the neck. Penny’s lawyers have indicated they plan to argue that he wasn’t applying pressure in a way that could have killed Neely, and that his death could have been caused by other factors, including the use of the synthetic cannabinoid known as K2.

Noting Neely's mental health problems, K2 use and conduct on the train, prosecutor Dafna Yoran probed prospective jurors about whether they might think he brought his death on himself.

“You don’t really know what the person’s going to do on K2,” one potential panelist responded, adding: “Not that I would think he deserved it.”

“Under the law, all life is equal,” the prosecutor reminded the group, emphasizing that anyone selected as a juror will have to judge the evidence, not Neely's history — or Penny's.

The 25-year-old former Marine was discharged in 2021 and has since taken college classes, his lawyers have said.

“You can be grateful” for his service, Yoran told the prospective jurors. “Can you understand that you are not here to judge the defendant as a person?”

“Law is law,” one responded. “And if the evidence proves itself correct, then it is what it is.”

FILE - A group of several hundred people protest the death of Jordan Neely, May 5, 2023, at Washington Square Park in New York. (AP Photo/Brooke Lansdale, File)

Daniel Penny arrives at the court in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A group of people rally in support of justice for Jordan Neely across the street from the Manhattan criminal courts in New York, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Daniel Penny returns to the courtroom after a break in New York, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

FILE - From right, attorney Donte Mills; Jordan Neely's father, Andre Zachery; attorney Lennon Edwards; and Neely's aunt Mildred Mahazu appear at a news conference in New York City, May 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)

Potential jurors are questioned in the trial of a man who used a chokehold on a subway panhandler

Daniel Penny arrives to Manhattan criminal court in New York, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Potential jurors are questioned in the trial of a man who used a chokehold on a subway panhandler

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — More than 600 million women and girls are now affected by war, a 50% increase from a decade ago, and they fear the world has forgotten them amid an escalating backlash against women’s rights and gender equality, top U.N. officials say.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a new report that amid record levels of armed conflict and violence, progress over the decades for women is vanishing and “generational gains in women’s rights hang in the balance around the world.”

The U.N. chief was assessing the state of a Security Council resolution adopted on Oct. 31, 2000, that demanded equal participation for women in peace negotiations, a goal that remains as distant as gender equality.

Guterres said current data and findings show that “the transformative potential of women’s leadership and inclusion in the pursuit of peace” is being undercut — with power and decision-making on peace and security matters overwhelmingly in the hands of men.

“As long as oppressive patriarchal social structures and gender biases hold back half our societies, peace will remain elusive,” he warned.

The report says the proportion of women killed in armed conflicts doubled in 2023 compared with a year earlier; U.N.-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence were 50% higher; and the number of girls affected by grave violations in conflicts increased by 35%.

At a two-day U.N. Security Council meeting on the topic that ended Friday, Sima Bahous, head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality known as UN Women, also pointed to a lack of attention to women’s voices in the search for peace.

She cited the fears of millions of women and girls in Afghanistan deprived of an education and a future; of displaced women in Gaza “waiting for death”; of women in Sudan who are victims of sexual violence; and of the vanishing hopes of women in Myanmar, Haiti, Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere.

Bahous said 612 million women and girls who are affected by war “wonder if the world has already forgotten them, if they have fallen from the agenda of an international community overwhelmed by crises of ever deeper frequency, severity and urgency.”

The world needs to answer their fears with hope, she said, but the reality is grim: “One in two women and girls in conflict-affected settings are facing moderate to severe food insecurity, 61% of all maternal mortality is concentrated in 35 conflict-affected countries.”

As for women’s participation in decision-making and politics in countries in conflict, Bahous said it’s stalled.

“The percentage of women in peace negotiations has not improved over the last decade: under 10% on average in all processes, and under 20% in processes led or supported by the United Nations,” she said.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed announced the launch of a “Common Pledge on Women’s Participation in Peace Processes,” and urged governments, regional organizations and others involved in mediation to join the U.N. in taking concrete steps toward that end. The commitments include appointing women as lead mediators and team members, promoting direct and meaningful participation of women in peace processes, consulting women leaders at all stages and embedding women with expertise “to foster gender-responsive peace processes and agreements,” she said.

Many U.N. ambassadors who spoke at the council meeting focused on the lack of “political will” to promote women in the peace process.

“We’ve seen how the lack of political will continues to stand in the way of the full implementation of the commitments entered into by member states,” Panama’s U.N. Ambassador Eloy Alfaro de Alba said Friday.

FILE - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

War affects over 600 million women and girls, UN says

War affects over 600 million women and girls, UN says