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Defense pathologist says Jordan Neely didn’t die from chokehold on NYC subway
By
Samantha Max
Published Nov 21, 2024
Modified Nov 21, 2024
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Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
By
Samantha Max
Published Nov 21, 2024
Modified Nov 21, 2024
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Jordan Neely did not die from Daniel Penny’s chokehold, a pathologist hired by the defense testified Thursday at Penny’s criminal trial in Manhattan.
Penny has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges for putting Neely, a homeless man with schizophrenia, in a chokehold on an uptown F train in May 2023. Penny has said he was trying to restrain Neely because Neely was yelling threats. Prosecutors and a witness from the city medical examiner’s office have argued that Penny held Neely’s neck with too much pressure for too long, killing him.
But Dr. Satish Chundru, a Texas-based forensic pathologist hired by Penny’s team, said Neely died from the stress of the encounter and a combination of underlying health conditions — not the chokehold itself.
Chundru said he made his assessment after reviewing Neely’s autopsy and various accompanying reports, photos of Neely’s body after his death, and other evidence from the case, including a cellphone video that included several minutes of the chokehold.
“What is your conclusion as to whether this is a chokehold death?” defense attorney Steven Raiser asked Chundru in court Thursday.
“This is not a chokehold death,” he said.
Penny’s chokehold is at the center of this case. To convict him, prosecutors have to convince a jury that Penny’s actions caused Neely’s death, even if he didn’t mean to kill him. If defense attorneys can sow enough doubt about the reason that Neely died, jurors could find Penny not guilty.
Chundru refuted various theories of the medical examiner who performed Neely’s autopsy, Dr. Cynthia Harris, who listened from the galley throughout Chundru's testimony. Harris testified earlier in the trial that Neely died because his neck was compressed, causing him to asphyxiate. She said she felt sure the chokehold caused Neely’s death after watching a video of the incident, and that injuries on Neely’s body backed up her conclusion.
But Chundru repeatedly told jurors that her theories didn’t make sense and that he’d never read about them in textbooks or in research. He said if Penny had asphyxiated Neely as Harris said, he would have expected to see more burst blood vessels on Neely’s eyelids.
Chundru also said the medical examiner’s theory that Penny blocked Neely’s airway by displacing his tongue was “just speculation,” because it’s impossible to see where his tongue is during the chokehold.
Penny’s defense attorney asked Chundru about the mechanics of two types of chokeholds: air chokes, which block the windpipe, and blood chokes, which prevent blood from flowing properly through arteries on the sides of the neck. Chundru said Penny’s chokehold didn’t meet the criteria for either, because of the position on Penny’s arm and how long Neely remained responsive. He also cast doubt on Harris’ theory that Penny impeded multiple parts of Neely’s neck at different points during the chokehold, telling jurors that he would have expected it to take longer for Neely to die if that were the case.
Chundru said he thinks Neely died from a combination of schizophrenia, a genetic trait called sickle cell that can make it difficult for blood vessels to carry oxygen, the stress of the struggle and the synthetic cannabinoids in his system. He cited research that has found people with schizophrenia face an increased risk of sudden cardiac arrest and that people with sickle cell trait can also die suddenly from intense exertion. Harris said during her testimony that she didn’t think Neely’s schizophrenia or sickle cell trait directly caused his death.
When Raiser asked Chundru whether Neely could have died even if he hadn’t been placed in a chokehold, Chundru said “that’s correct.” And when asked whether a completely healthy individual would have died from the same chokehold, he said no.
“Dr. Chundru, in your opinion, did Mr. Penny choke Mr. Neely to death on May 1, 2023?” Raiser asked.
“No,” he replied.
Prosecution challenges Chundru’s conclusions
Chundru is a forensic pathologist who spent more than a decade as a medical examiner in Miami, Florida and Austin, Texas before going into private practice. Now, he consults on cases across the country and also performs autopsies for several small Texas counties, he said. He told jurors he has performed about 9,000 autopsies during his career.
Chundru told jurors he has spent about 150 hours on Penny’s case over the past year-and-a-half, and that Penny’s attorneys are paying him $600 an hour — meaning he’s made about $90,000 from this case. He said his typical rate is $750 an hour.
During cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran noted the number of autopsies Chundru said he has performed throughout his career would amount to about 600 autopsies each year — far higher than the recommended limit of 250 per year — or 325 at the most, according to guidelines from the National Association of Medical Examiners.
“I work really hard,” he said.
Yoran cited statements Chundru had made on TV, which she said contradicted some of his medical conclusions in this case. She also challenged Chundru’s statements that he had never heard of several of the theories Harris attributed to Neely’s death, at times reading directly from a textbook written by one of Chundru’s mentors.
“You said you’ve never heard of this concept. And do you agree that it’s in your mentor’s book?” Yoran asked at one point while questioning him about different parts of Neely’s neck that could have been affected by Penny’s chokehold.
“Yes,” he said.
The prosecutor also focused on one central aspect of Chundru’s theory, related to the amount of pressure Penny was exerting on Neely’s neck at different times during the incident. Chundru said he didn’t think Penny was consistently applying enough pressure to cause Neely to lose consciousness and die. He said he based his assessment in part on a statement made on the subway by Eric Gonzalez, one of the men who helped to restrain Neely.
He can be heard in a video saying that Penny wasn’t squeezing. But Gonzalez testified at trial that he didn’t know whether Penny was squeezing in that moment. He said someone else on the train was urging them to let go of Neely, and he told that person Penny wasn’t squeezing to “shut him up.”
Yoran asked Chundru if it’s possible that Penny was actually squeezing in that moment.
“I mean, anything’s possible,” Chundru replied.
Correction: This story has been updated to clarify Dr. Satish Chundru's job title.
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Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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