A Manhattan jury on Monday found former Marine Daniel Penny “not guilty” of criminally negligent homicide after he subdued a mentally ill homeless man, Jordan Neely, in a chokehold on a subway train in May 2023. The verdict followed a lopsided prosecution designed to orchestrate a conviction, and Penny’s acquittal represents yet another rejection of pro-criminal law enforcement. By Tuesday, an Arizona representative had already proposed that Congress award Penny the Congressional Gold Medal for his heroism.

Some Christians may be reluctant to celebrate any actions that result in someone’s death. After all, God declares, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6). This is a good instinct, but one that is misapplied here. Penny acted not to take a life but to protect his fellow subway passengers.

In other words, it’s possible for Christians to conclude that Neely’s death was a tragedy but Penny’s acquittal was not.

A brief summary of the facts may be helpful. Neely and Penny were both on the F train in May 2023 at a time when subway crime was spiking, and authorities were doing little to stop it. Neely began menacing passengers. Witnesses testified at the trial that he frightened them, ranting that “someone is going to die today,” and that he was “willing to die and go to jail.” With the help of other passengers, Penny intervened to subdue Neely. At one point Penny placed Neely in a chokehold, although he shifted him into a position to make breathing easier. When police arrived on the car at the next station stop, Penny and others still believed Neely to be alive.

Also relevant to the story is Neely’s character, which Penny could not have known at the time, beyond what was evident from his appearance and behavior. Neely was a mentally ill drug addict and repeat criminal. He had racked up more than 40 arrests by the age of 30 and had multiple hospitalizations for mental issues. He had a potent synthetic drug related to marijuana in his system at the time of death, which may have influenced both his behavior and his death. He had been recently released from Rikers Island after doing time for punching a 67-year-old woman in the face, breaking her facial bones. Penny’s actions prevented Neely from harming any other passengers on the train that day.

“As a strict matter of law, Penny’s actions were permissible under the doctrine of justification, which recognizes that people under a threat of force have the right to defend themselves and others,” notes National Review. Here, the law reflects an ethic consistent with a biblical worldview. Namely, those with power should use their strength to defend the helpless (e.g., Proverbs 31:4-9, James 1:27). Penny — able-bodied and trained in combat — intervened to prevent a man on drugs, with a history of violence towards women, from finding another victim.

Instead of praising this heroism, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Soros prosecutor, charged Penny with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. In the four-week trial, the prosecutors tried to inject racial prejudice into the case by repeatedly pointing out that Penny is white and Neely was black (they were less willing to point out that many of the fellow passengers Penny protected were also black).

“The prosecutors’ plan was transparent,” analyzed the National Review editors: “Use race to establish solidarity with one or more progressives sure to be seated on a jury of twelve Manhattanites; convince them that a black man’s death required a guilty verdict regardless of the circumstances; and figure that jurors more sympathetic to Penny might convict him on one count if they could feel good about acquitting him on the other.”

After the trial finished, the jury convened last Monday to deliberate. When they told the judge they were deadlocked, he told them to keep deliberating. By Friday, the jury had deadlocked again. “That was a bad sign for Penny, suggesting that at least one juror was willing to convict him of reckless homicide despite the dearth of evidence,” noted National Review. At this point, Penny’s lawyers asked the judge to declare a mistrial, but Bragg countered by moving to dismiss the manslaughter charge, in hopes of inducing the jury to agree to the lesser charge. The judge sided with Bragg’s novel maneuver. However, after this move, the jury chose to acquit Penny of the charge of criminally negligent homicide instead.

“Justice has been done. The disgrace is that it was necessary for justice to be done in a courtroom,” declared National Review.

By any accounting, this was a tragic incident, but not of Penny’s making. It was a tragedy that, under Bragg, New York had become so lax in prosecuting crime that repeat offenders like Neely were not dealt with properly — for his crimes, his mental health issues, and his drug addiction. It was a tragedy that law enforcement on the subway was so lax that criminals like Neely were allowed to terrorize subway riders with impunity. If Penny had not stood up to use the strength and skills he possessed in defense of the vulnerable, that would have only added one more tragedy.

The jurors who acquitted Penny “are New Yorkers,” observed National Review’s Dan McLaughlin. “They know what their city looks like today. They know how crazy people on the subway can swiftly escalate from annoyance to terror. They know that sometimes, the only law on hand is the courage of civilians such as Daniel Penny. Their verdict, whether explicitly or implicitly, reflects that experience.”

And their verdict, however messily they reached it, was that New Yorkers prefer protection by their fellow civilians than being left vulnerable under the agencies tasked with their protection.