What to Know About the Daniel Penny Trial as the Prosecution Rests

Prosecutors have had to acknowledge that a victim frightened those around him. The defense lawyers are expected to paint their client as a protector.

Over eight days of testimony from more than 30 witnesses, prosecutors have not shied away from accounts that described the homeless man whom Daniel Penny choked to death on an F train as frightening. In fact, they sought them out.

The prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, led by Dafna Yoran, rested their case Monday after calling nine passengers who rode the train that day last year. Almost all recounted how the victim, Jordan Neely, had menacingly approached, yelling about being hungry and wanting to go back to jail.

But letting witnesses describe how frightened they were was a strategic move, said Anna Cominsky, director of the criminal defense clinic at New York Law School. Because prosecutors would probably not find passengers who would say that Mr. Neely did nothing wrong, they had to address his actions head on, she said.

So the government lawyers attempting to convict Mr. Penny of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide laid out a theory that did not depend on Mr. Neely’s actions: They argued that Mr. Penny, a former Marine, held Mr. Neely in a chokehold for too long when he restrained him. Mr. Penny’s actions turned criminal when he kept choking Mr. Neely, a Michael Jackson impersonator with a history of mental illness, after he was no longer a threat, they said.

Prosecutors have tried to get the jurors to move past what happened in the train car and to focus on the minutes after the doors opened at the Broadway-Lafayette Street station in Manhattan and Mr. Penny still did not release his hold. It was then, they told the jurors, that Mr. Penny’s actions turned from helpful to criminal. And, they said, his training in the Marines should have told him when to let go.