Jury sees video of subway chokehold that led to Marine veteran's manslaughter trial

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Jury sees video of subway chokehold that led to Marine veteran's manslaughter trial

2024-11-05 08:02 Last Updated At：08:11

NEW YORK (AP) — As he lay on a subway floor with a stranger's arm around his neck, Jordan Neely reached and tapped a bystander on the leg, video showed Monday at the manslaughter trial surrounding Neely's death.

The bystander bent down to Neely, who gestured urgently with his right hand for about 15 seconds. Then a third person who was already holding Neely's left arm grasped his right arm and folded it across his chest.

All the while, Marine veteran Daniel Penny continued gripping Neely by the neck from behind for over three minutes as Neely tried to roll free, briefly pried his left arm loose and swung his leg until his movement slowed, then stopped.

As the video was replayed on big courtroom screens, Neely's father held his head in his hands and then quietly stepped out of the room.

The video — a longer version of a clip that has been seen widely on social media — and another onlooker’s footage gave the anonymous jury its first direct view of the chokehold at the heart of Penny's manslaughter trial. A third witness told jurors Monday that Penny seemed to be in a “trance” as he restrained Neely that day in 2023.

The videos also gave the public a bigger window into an encounter that has sparked protests and political debate over the line between self-defense and vigilantism and how race, homelessness, mental illness and drug use factor in. Neely was Black; Penny is white.

Prosecutors say Penny, 25, recklessly killed Neely, who had frightened passengers on the train with angry statements that some riders found threatening.

Penny has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers say he was defending himself and his fellow passengers, stepping up in one of the volatile moments that New York straphangers dread but most shy away from confronting.

Neely, 30, known to some subway riders for doing Michael Jackson impersonations, had mental health and drug problems. His family has said his life unraveled after his mother was murdered when he was a teenager and he testified at the trial that led to her boyfriend's conviction.

He crossed paths with Penny — an architecture student who'd served four years in the Marines — in a subway train on May 1, 2023.

Neely was homeless, broke, hungry, thirsty and so desperate he was willing to go to jail, he shouted at passengers who later recalled his statements to police.

He made high schooler Ivette Rosario so nervous that she thought she'd pass out, she testified Monday. She’d seen outbursts on subways before, “but not like that,” she said.

“Because of the tone, I got pretty frightened, and I got scared of what was said,” Rosario said. She told jurors Neely was shouting in “an angry tone, like when you’re fed up.”

She said she looked downward, hoping the train would get to a station before anything else happened.

Then she heard the sound of someone falling, looked up and saw Neely on the floor, with Penny's arm around his neck.

The train soon stopped, and she got out but kept watching from the platform. She would soon place one of the first 911 calls about what was happening. But first, her shaking hand pressed record on her phone.

She captured video — first seen publicly in court Monday — of Penny on the floor, gripping Neely's head in the crook of his left arm, with his right hand atop Neely's head. In the clip, an unseen bystander worries aloud that Neely is dying and urges, “Let him go!”

Mexican freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vázquez made the other video that jurors saw Monday. That recording captured a different off-camera bystander, named Larry Goodson, expressing concern for Neely's life and saying that he'll need to be released if he exhibits certain physical reactions.

Penny didn't respond, Goodson testified Monday: “He was in a whole other trance.”

Vázquez posted part of the video last year on social media, but first he cut out about a minute at the beginning when there wasn't much movement, he testified Monday. The full version, including Neely's tapping and gesturing, was shown in court.

Goodson, Rosario and Vázquez said they didn't see Neely approach anyone.

According to the defense, Neely lurched toward a woman with a stroller and said he “will kill,” and Penny felt he had to take action.

Prosecutors don’t claim that Penny intended to kill, nor fault him for initially deciding to try to stop Neely’s menacing behavior. But they say Penny went overboard by choking the man for about six minutes, even after passengers could exit the train, after others helped hold Neely down, and after he stopped moving for nearly a minute.

Neely family lawyer Donte Mills maintains that whatever he might have said, it didn’t justify what Penny did. Mills declined to comment after court Monday.

Defense attorneys say Penny kept holding onto Neely because he tried at times to get loose. Prosecutors have said Neely was fighting for survival.

The defense also challenges medical examiners’ finding that the chokehold killed Neely.

Harris and Trump's final push before Election Day brings them to the same patch of Pennsylvania

2024-11-05 08:08 Last Updated At：08:10

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump made their final pitches to voters Monday in the same part of Pennsylvania at roughly the same time, spending the last full day of the presidential campaign in a state that could make or break their chances.

Focusing on Pennsylvania's southeast corner, Trump took the stage in Reading, about 30 miles from Allentown, where Harris held her own event about half an hour later.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump said. “It’s over.”

Indeed, a Trump victory in Pennsylvania, flipping its 19 Electoral College votes, would puncture the Democrats' “blue wall” and make it harder for Harris to win the necessary 270 votes.

Harris, the Democratic nominee, spent all of Monday in Pennsylvania, the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome, and offered a similarly blunt assessment.

“We need everyone in Pennsylvania to vote,” she said. “You are going to make the difference in this election.”

In addition to Allentown, Harris visited Scranton — the birthplace of President Joe Biden — and Reading and had a stop planned in Pittsburgh before ending with a late-night Philadelphia rally that was to include Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

“Are you ready to do this?” Harris yelled Monday in Scranton, with a large handmade “VOTE FOR FREEDOM” sign behind her and a similar “VOTE” banner to her side.

Trump went first to North Carolina before visiting Reading. He then headed to Pittsburgh, at the opposite end of the state, before concluding in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he will hold his last campaign rally in the same place he concluded his 2016 and 2020 runs.

Southeast Pennsylvania is home to thousands of Latinos, including a sizable Puerto Rican population. Harris and her allies have repeatedly hit Trump for a comedian's dig at Puerto Rico during the former president's marquee Madison Square Garden event. The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

“It was absurd,” said German Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered so many people — even many Republicans. It wasn’t right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”

But Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of Trump’s motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico despite his family being Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that’s why he will vote for Trump.

“Is the border going to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about,” he said.

Harris told the crowd, “I stand here proud of my long-standing commitment to Puerto Rico and her people."

“And I will be a president for all Americans," she said, adding that “momentum is on our side. Can you feel it?”

Trump, meanwhile, stuck to talking about his proposed crackdown on immigration. He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day after she went missing during a trip to go hiking. Officials say the suspect in her death, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, entered the U.S. illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.

About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory by either side would be unprecedented.

Trump winning would make him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a felony, after his hush-money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become only the second president in history to win nonconsecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.

Harris is vying to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office — four years after she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second in command.

The vice president ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set into motion his withdrawal from the race — one of a series of convulsions that hit this year’s campaign.

Trump survived by millimeters an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September, when a gunman had set up a rifle as Trump golfed at one of his courses in Florida.

Harris, 60, has pitched herself as a generational change from 81-year-old Biden and Trump, who is 78. She’s emphasized her support for abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion services, and she has regularly noted the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Assembling a coalition ranging from progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris has called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even embraced the critique that Trump is accurately described as a “ fascist.”

Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump by name, calling him instead “the other guy.” She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus.

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said on a call with reporters that not saying Trump’s name was deliberate because voters “want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful, patriotic vision for the future.”

Harris also offered some insights into her personal formation as a politician that she doesn't often divulge. In Scranton, she talked about once being a longshot while running for San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and how she “used to campaign with my ironing board.”

“I’d walk to the front of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because, you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” the vice president said, recalling how she would tape her posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me as they walked in and out.”

In Allentown, Harris rallied with rapper Fat Joe. She then made her own visit to Reading after Trump's rally had concluded, visiting Old San Juan Cafe, a Puerto Rican restaurant, with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez are of Puerto Rican heritage.

Supporters chanted “Sí se puede” and “Kamala” as the vice president’s motorcade pulled up. Once inside, Harris chatted with some diners, even mixing in “Gracias” and a few Spanish words. The vice president later ordered cassava, yellow rice and pork, saying, “I'm very hungry" as she noted that she's been too busy campaigning to find time for many meals.

Afterward, Harris did some of her own canvassing, stopping at two homes in Reading while flanked by campaign volunteers.

“It’s the day before the election and I just wanted to come by and say I hope to earn your vote," she said at one house.

The woman replied, “You already got my vote" and said her husband would be casting his ballot the next day.

Standing in line for Harris’ Allentown rally, 54-year-old Ron Kessler, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for just the second time in his life. Kessler said that, for a long time, he didn’t vote, thinking the country “would vote for the correct candidate.”

But “now that I’m older and much more wiser, I believe it’s important, it’s my civic duty. And it’s important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the country.”

As recently as Sunday, Trump renewed his false claims that U.S. elections are rigged against him, mused about violence against journalists and said he “ shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 — dark turns that have overshadowed another anchor of his closing argument: “Kamala broke it. I will fix it.”

Superville reported from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Barrow reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.