The ugliest answer here is almost certainly the truest: Penny is white and Neely is black, and the central idea that animates woke DAs like Bragg (and the leftist legislators who’ve utterly eroded our criminal justice system) is that black people are dying in an epidemic of white violence.

The chaotic bodycam footage, which captured two police officers confirming that an unconscious Neely still had a pulse when they arrived at Fulton Station on May 1, 2023, was shown to jurors in Penny’s manslaughter trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.