Daniel Penny says he would like to thank the New York jury for their “courage.”

Marine veteran Daniel Penny said he would like to thank the jury that found him not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2023 subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely.

“I want to hug her. I would like to thank you. Yes definitely. It takes a lot of courage, especially in this climate in New York City, to stand up for myself,” he told The “Five” co-host Jeanine Pirro previewed an exclusive interview that aired on Fox Nation on Wednesday.

Penny’s defense attorneys, Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff, expressed concern over the course of the trial as Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed the second-degree manslaughter charge against Penny after the jury said it could not reach a unanimous decision on the highest charges could come.

With the involuntary manslaughter charge overturned and the jury able to focus on the second count, Raiser said they were concerned that someone considering a guilty verdict on the main count might also be considering a guilty verdict on the second count.

“At that point we thought the best we could really hope for was a dead jury, but we didn’t know. And we also felt that there was some interaction here in terms of understanding how long the prosecution would go to get a conviction, which was quite off-putting to the defense team,” he added. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

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Penny said if he were faced with the same situation on the subway where someone was making threats and behaving erratically, he would take action again.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something about that situation and someone got hurt,” he said. “I would feel guilty for the rest of my life.”

The architecture student added that he feared Neely would carry out his threats to kill people in the subway car.

“There are always outbreaks on the train. Unfortunately, in New York City, people always come up and say they’re talking kind of crazy, and that was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It was very serious. I completely “I believed what he said,” Penny said to Pirro.

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Penny still faces a civil lawsuit from Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, who accuses the 26-year-old of causing his son’s death through “negligence, carelessness and recklessness.”

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According to a copy of the civil complaint, Zachery is seeking unspecified damages for assault and battery.

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