Let’s call him the Bad Samaritan.

After Daniel Penny, a white subway passenger, subdued and choked a menacing Black homeless man, Jordan Neely, to death last year on a Manhattan train, two weeks passed before Penny was arrested.

If the roles had been reversed, Neely would have been in handcuffs before the next train rolled into the station.

Instead, Penny, 26, has been hailed as a hero in some circles, with more than $3 million in donations made to his legal defense fund. Opening statements in his manslaughter trial were delivered Friday.

Neely’s family, meanwhile, has struggled with his loss and with ongoing attempts to demonize the victim, even in death.

“The manner in which the defendant permanently silenced Jordan Neely evinced the defendant’s belief that Mr. Neely didn’t deserve even the minimum modicum of humanity,” Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran told jurors during the opening statements at Penny’s trial in Manhattan.

Penny, a Marine veteran, was charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after Neely’s death on May 1, 2023.

Witnesses said Penny intervened when an agitated and unhinged Neely, a subway and street performer, boarded an uptown F train and began threatening passengers while telling them he was hungry and thirsty.

Cops said Penny grabbed Neely from behind in a chokehold, pulled him to the floor of the subway car and continued to hold him while two others helped restrain him.

By the time emergency personnel arrived, Neely was dead.

Prosecutors said Penny held Neely, 30 in a chokehold for six minutes, even after he was no longer a threat.

Video showed he stopped moving after five.

“His initial attempt was even laudable: to protect fellow New Yorkers from a perceived threat,” Yoran said. “But deadly physical force is permitted only when it’s absolutely necessary and only for as long as it’s absolutely necessary, and here the defendant went way too far.”

Penny is no hero, and his supporters should stop pretending that he is. He killed a man who wasn’t armed and hadn’t touched anyone on the subway.

Penny’s defenders like to point out that Neely, who had a history of mental illness, had been arrested 42 times in the previous 10 years, most recently in November 2021 for slugging a 67-year-old female stranger in the face as she walked out of a subway station.

But Penny had no way of knowing that before Neely got on the F train that afternoon.

His past did not matter. Neither did Penny’s military record. Ex-Marine or not, he had no right or authority to take another man’s life.

Many would like to believe that race has nothing to do with this case, as if the color of Neely’s skin had nothing to do with his death or how he was perceived by other riders on the train.

If you don’t think this trial is about race, ask Penny’s lawyers why they were accused of scratching so many people of color from the jury.

Prosecutors filed a motion accusing Penny’s defense team of striking certain potential jurors because of their race. At the time, defense lawyers used their challenges to strike at least 10 people of color.

Among them was a Black woman with purple hair. But the defense insisted that rejecting her had nothing to do with her being Black.

They just didn’t like the hair.

No one believes Penny intended to kill anyone when he boarded the train that day on his way to the gym.

But if he had been able, even for 30 seconds, to see the troubled Neely as a person and not as a threat, Neely might still be alive today.

“Mr. Penny was so reckless with Mr. Neely’s life because he didn’t recognize his humanity,” Yoran said.

Donte Mills, the Neely family’s lawyer, was more to the point.

“He used his martial arts training to kill Jordan Neely and did not use his first aid training at all because he didn’t think that Jordan was worth it,” Mills said outside the courthouse.

“He was worth hurting, but he wasn’t worth trying to save.”

___

©2024 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.