NEW YORK, June 28 — The former US Marine sergeant accused of fatally strangling Jordan Neely, a homeless man, in a chokehold in a New York subway car last month pleaded not guilty to charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in a court appearance today.

Daniel Penny, 24, was captured in videos recorded by bystanders putting Neely in a chokehold from behind for several minutes on May 1 while they rode on an F train in Manhattan. The killing drew national attention and sparked protests in May by those angered by the police’s delay of more than a week in arresting Penny, who is white, with killing Neely, a Black man.

Penny first appeared in the Manhattan Criminal Court on May 12 on a charge of second-degree manslaughter, a felony crime that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Judge Kevin McGrath released Penny on a US$100,000 (RM467,150) bond and ordered him to surrender his passport.

After that hearing, a grand jury voted to indict Penny on June 14.

In the minutes before he was killed, Neely, a 30-year-old former Michael Jackson impersonator who struggled with mental illness, had been shouting about how hungry he was and that he was willing to return to jail or die, according to passengers on the subway car.

Penny has said he acted to defend himself and other passengers, and did not intend to kill Neely, and he has been hailed as a hero by prominent Republican politicians. Protesters have decried Penny as a vigilante and described Neely’s death as a lynching.

Penny was questioned by police that day but would not be arrested and make an initial court appearance until 11 days after the killing.

Witnesses have said Neely did not physically threaten or attack anyone before Penny grabbed him. His killing renewed debate about gaps in the city’s systems for homeless and mentally ill New Yorkers.

Neely had been in and out of the city’s homeless shelters in recent years, and his family say his mental health worsened dramatically after his mother was murdered when he was a teenager. He had been arrested many times, most recently for punching a 67-year-old woman in 2021, breaking bones in her face. — Reuters