The word “murder” heightened tensions between the defense and prosecutors in the trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran accused of causing the death of a Michael Jackson impersonator, Jordan Neely, on a New York subway car last year.

The defense had brought a medical expert to the witness stand, a forensic pathologist named Satish Chundru, who is based in Texas, and who, according to Sun reportedtestified that he believed Neely did not die of a lack of oxygen, as a doctor in New York City had ruled, after Mr. Penny held him in a choke hold.

On Friday, prosecutors continued their tough cross-examination of the expert, eliciting the word “murder” from his testimony, as they brought up another case the expert had been involved in, prompting an uproar from the defense team.

The question first came up when a medical examiner in New York, Dr. Cynthia Harris, who had ruled Neely’s death a homicide, used the word in her testimony. The defense ran up and protested.

When a doctor determines that a person’s death is a homicide, it means that the person died at the hands of another person, as opposed to by disease or suicide, or in a natural disaster or in an accident, such as falling from a roof or drowning in the ocean. However, the pathologist’s use of the word homicide does not mean that a crime was involved in the death. It is up to the jury to decide. A homicide can be caused by murder, manslaughter, assault, accidental or in self-defense. Whether the other person is actually guilty of criminally causing the murder must be decided by the jury after hearing evidence during a trial.

But the word murder in the popular vernacular is a synonym for murder, and hearing the word “murder” during testimony can create confusion, Mr. Penny’s defense argued that jurors, who might not be familiar with the difference between murder and manslaughter, could, after hearing the word murder, conclude that a crime had been committed. Both parties agreed to keep the toxic word out of the courtroom.

But last Friday the word came up again, this time in the testimony of the expert witness the defense had called, which made matters even worse. Especially since the testimony may have damaged the credibility of the defense’s argument.

Mr. Penny, 26, is charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death. Combined, these charges carry a maximum of 19 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty. The defense argues that not only did he intend to kill Neely, but that his stranglehold alone did not cause the death.

On May 1, 2023, Neely, a 30-year-old street performer, who was homeless at the time and had a long history of drug use and mental illness, boarded a subway in lower Manhattan. As soon as he entered the subway car, he started shouting to passengers that he was thirsty, hungry, ready to go to jail and ready to die. Although he did not physically attack anyone, and did not carry a weapon, the tone of his voice, according to witnesses, was extremely threatening and frightening. So much so that a witness testified that she feared for her life.

Mr. Penny, who is from Long Island but lived in the East Village and studied architecture and engineering at the New York City College of Technology, was on her way to the gym. He perceived Neely’s erratic behavior as extremely dangerous and, as he later told the officers, was trying to protect his subway companions and himself when he grabbed Neely from behind, put him in a choke hold, brought him to the ground, and held him on the floor of the subway car for about six minutes. Two other men helped Mr. Penny to hold back Neely.

A video, recorded by a freelance journalist, who was also on the train, shows how Mr. Penny holding Neely in the choke hold, how he uses his legs to secure him and how Neely’s body eventually goes limp. When officers arrived at the scene, Neely was unresponsive but for a light pulse. He was pronounced dead at the hospital about an hour later.

Prosecutors claim the strangulation cut off Neely’s airway and he died from lack of oxygen. Defense attorneys argue that it is unclear, and impossible to determine, how much pressure Penny applied to Neely’s neck during the struggle, and that their client’s stranglehold did not cause death.

After spending more than a hundred hours reviewing the evidence, Dr. Chundru that he believed Neely died from the “combined effects” of sickle cell crisis, schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint, and the synthetic marijuana in his system in toxicology. Report. He claimed Mr Penny had struggled with Mr Neely, but not choked him to death.

The autopsy found that Neely’s spleen, a small organ that stores and filters blood, was sheared, meaning the red blood cells were shaped like shears and thus unable to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the cells. Histology images, which look at the microscopic structure of tissues and cells, showed that Neely was experiencing what is known as a sickling crisis when he died. Like many people of color in the United States and around the world, Neely was suffering from sickle cell disease, a blood disorder that is mostly benign unless it erupts into a crisis and causes the blood cells to cut.

Dr. Chundru found that an increase in Neely’s circulation, increase in his heart rate, and increase in his blood pressure caused the sickle, which ultimately led to his death. But he reiterated that “several factors” played a role in this “effort”: a schizophrenic episode, which he believed Neely suffered from, the ingestion of the synthetic cannabinoid K2, also known as spice, and the physical struggle with Mr. Penny.

On Friday, however, an Assistant District Attorney, Dofna Yoran, who is prosecuting the case on behalf of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, asked Dr. Chundru about another case he had been hired to review. This was the case with Sergeant James Brown, who died in the El Paso County Jail while serving a DWI sentence in 2012. Dr. Chundru had ruled Brown’s death a “murder”.

“Is it true that in that case,” Yoran asked the expert, “the doctor judged it to be a natural death due to sickle cell disease, due to exertion?”

“Yes.” Dr. Chudrun replied.

Officials with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said Brown became upset because he wasn’t going to be released when he expected. Surrounded by detainees, he said he couldn’t breathe in a video. He was taken to the prison clinic and later to the hospital where he died. Sheriff’s office officials said he died of an undisclosed, pre-existing condition.

“But Sergeant Brown had been restrained. They had pinned him down, and as such it was impeding his ability to breathe; correct?” Ms. Yoran asked, adding that when Dr. Chudrun testified at trial, he concluded that Sergeant Brown’s cause of death was suffocation caused by the officers who pinned him down, thereby triggering a sickling event; isn’t that right?”

Dr. Chundru, who looked through an article in which the case was cited, which had been handed over to him by the prosecution, did not find the word suffocation (strangulation) in the text.

“Are we reading the same article? You said suffocation. The word suffocation is not in this,” he replied.

“You said murder,” the prosecutor said, catching himself and quickly adding, “I just didn’t want to use the word murder.”

“In that case, the coroner said,” she explained, “that this was a natural death caused by him (the sergeant) going into a patient crisis based on extreme exertion, that’s what the coroner said… That’s the same thing you said here.”

The expert, who appeared nervous and exhausted after hours of testimony, replied: “No… I’ve always said… that Brown’s combative behavior could have triggered the sickling crisis. The possible physical restraint of law enforcement made the situation worse.” Reading from the article, he was quoted as saying, “Chundru concluded that Brown’s manner of death was murder.” But then he added, “That’s the same thing I would say in this case.”

Ms. Yoran shot back, asking if he testified that Neely did in fact die from a physical interaction with Mr. Penny, specifically the stranglehold?

The expert, now treading in muddy water, tried to explain his analysis.

“So the reason I did the combined effects, one of them is restraint and struggle…what that means is that Mr. Penny was involved in that restraint and struggle. So with what we do as coroners, if someone is involved or participated in somebody’s death, then you have to call it a murder. Then you have to decide whether that restraint was proper or not, that’s up to the jurors to decide, but you have to include that… And so, yes, restraint played a part in the sickling crisis, in Mr. Neely…”

The defense objected vehemently. After the lunch break, the presiding judge, Maxwell Wiley, who sided with the defense, instructed the jury that murder as defined by a medical examiner “is not an inference that a crime has been committed – you make that inference or it is made in a courtroom. ” But the judge didn’t strike the entire testimony, and the damage may have been done.

Although the sickling crisis was the cause of death, there is no dispute that the trigger has been the physical struggle, which Mr. Penny was involved in.

But the jury has heard so much medical testimony in recent days that it’s unclear how much they could take in. One juror, the judge noted, had his eyes closed “intermittently” on Friday.

Both sides, the defense and prosecution, have rested, meaning they will not call any more witnesses or adduce additional evidence. On Monday, the defense plans to submit a request that the case be dismissed.