This podcast is supported by the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the nation's most powerful environmental defenders rooted in the South.

Right now, we stand at a crossroads for our environment, and SELC is ready to tackle the challenges ahead.

It's ready to hold the line on environmental protections, and ready to ensure that people have the clean air, clean water, and healthy climate they deserve,

and ready to stand up to powerful interests in the courtroom, the halls of government, and communities across the South.

To learn more, visit southernenenvironment.org. For more than a year. For more than a year, this case has been playing out that taps into fears

that a lot of city dwellers carry with them, fears about who's safe and what it takes to keep us that way.

By the time this case got in front of a jury, it was known as the People v. Daniel Penny.

The jury has now been seated in the trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran, accused in the

chokehold death of Jordan Neely

on the subway last year.

It was May of 2023 when Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely's lives intersected on a Manhattan

F train.

Penny, an ex-marine, put Neely, a mentally ill homeless, in a chokehold. And Neely never got up.

Witnesses say Neely was acting erratically threatening passengers. The Marine veteran claims he and other

writers, quote, acted to protect themselves. It took days for Penny to even be arrested for what

happened. And how you saw what happened became a kind of

test. I think essentially where you fall on this case depends on what your vision of safety is and

how you feel about, you know, things like the mental health crisis in the city, you know, the

city's homeless population,

how you feel when the mayor says that he's going to put more cops in the subways and sweep homeless encampments,

you know, does that make you feel, quote unquote, safer, or does that make you feel concerned

for a very vulnerable population of people.

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