A leading forensic pathologist has testified for the defense during U.S. Marine veteran Daniel Penny’s trial in New York.
26-year-old Penny is accused of killing Jordan Neely on the New York City subway in 2023.
Neely was reportedly making violent death threats toward fellow subway passengers.
Penny and other passengers stepped in to protect other subway riders as Neely became increasingly erratic.
In an effort to subdue Neely, Penny placed him in a chokehold.
Neely, a homeless drug addict, later died.
Despite police saying Neely was still alive when they arrived, and confirming that officers refused to give him CPR, prosecutors charged Penny with manslaughter.
Penny now faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on the top charge he faces, manslaughter, for the death of 30-year-old Neely.
However, on Thursday, forensic pathologist Dr. Satish Chundru took the witness stand and offered a dramatically different conclusion than the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
“The chokehold did not cause the death,” Dr. Chundru testified.
Chundru is a former Miami-area medical examiner who now runs a private practice in Texas conducting autopsies in a half-dozen counties.
The top expert told the court that he did not believe an air choke caused Neely’s unconsciousness and, therefore, did not cause his death.
Chundru said he found the cause of death to be “the combined effects of sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint, and the synthetic marijuana.”
Someone schizophrenic, high on K2, and involved in a struggle can die without a chokehold being involved at all, he said.
Dr. Cynthia Harris, who conducted the city’s autopsy, was in the court and looked on while the defense expert contradicted her ruling.
She testified in the trial three days earlier.
Harris found it was the chokehold that killed Neely, not the synthetic drugs in his system, his sickle cell genetic disorder, or cardiac arrest.
“This is a very complicated case,” Chundru testified.
“We have schizophrenia involved, sickle cell trait involved, a chokehold.”
Additionally, Neely’s toxicology report revealed he had traces of K2 in his system.
K2 is a form of synthetic marijuana that experts testified is more like cocaine.
Chundru said that asphyxiation death comes in two phases.
In the first phase, the individual loses consciousness.
In the second, sustained pressure leads to death.
“What’s also important is unconsciousness always proceeds death in a chokehold,” he said.
However, rendering someone unconscious does not mean they are always going to die, he said.
When they are let go, they typically wake up, he said.
“In a sickle cell crisis, death is a lack of oxygen, so the same thing [in] an asphyxia death,” he said.
