Daniel Penny’s lawyers used a racist defense strategy and it worked

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 10: Daniel Penny attends an exclusive interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro for FOX Nation on December 10, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)" width="1000" height="600" class="gu-image" />

‘What findings of “excited delirium” and “sickle cell trait” both do is pathologize Black people, especially Black men, by turning their own bodies against them in a court of law.’ Photograph: John Lamparski/Getty Images

Make no mistake, Daniel Penny was acquitted this week of choking Jordan Neely to death on the New York City subway after his lawyers invoked some of the most institutionally insidious appeals to anti-Black racism around.

Penny’s defense lawyers and his legions of fans will say otherwise, of course. They’ll point out that Penny, a 26-year-old former marine, was merely protecting himself and his fellow passengers from Neely, a 30-year-old unhoused Black man suffering from schizophrenia. And they’ll argue that if race did matter in this trial, it was only Penny’s race that mattered. Penny’s attorneys (and the New York Post) vehemently objected when the prosecution described Penny, who is white, as “the white man”, as if pointing out the obvious was some underhanded masterpiece of racial guilt-tripping.