Vice President-elect JD Vance will have Daniel Penny, who was found not guilty in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely, as a personal guest at Saturday’s Army-Navy game.
In Landover, Maryland, at 3 p.m. ET, Vance and Penny will watch the game from Trump’s suite at Washington Commanders Stadium.
Penny’s intention to go to the game was initially reported by the Allbritton Journalism Institute’s NOTUS magazine.
In the New York chokehold case, Penny, a former Marine, was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide by a jury on Monday.
After choking the 30-year-old homeless man on a metro train in May 2023, Penny, who was 24 at the time, was charged by the prosecution with causing Neely’s death.
Neely had been acting strangely and shouting when he got on the subway, and he had a history of mental illness. Witnesses to the confrontation on the subway, including Juan Alberto Vazquez, told NBC’s New York station at the time that Neely was acting aggressively.
The man boarded the subway vehicle and started speaking in a fairly combative manner, telling the station in Spanish that he was hungry, thirsty, and that he didn’t care about anything, including going to jail or receiving a lengthy life sentence. that my death would not even be significant.
It was found that he had synthetic cannabinoids in his system at the time of his death.
A medical examiner testified during the trial that Neely died from chokehold, or compression of the neck.
The more serious accusation of manslaughter, which carries a maximum penalty of up to four years, was dismissed by the court since the jury in the case was deadlocked on it last week.
Given that Neely was Black and Penny is White, the case caused racial and political division among many.
“I have not said much about this case out of fear of (negatively) influencing the jury,” Vance wrote in a post on X following Penny’s acquittal earlier this week. Thankfully, however, justice was served in this instance. The fact that Penny was ever charged at all was a scandal.
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