In the immediate aftermath of the death of Jordan Neely after he was choked by Daniel Penny on the floor of an uptown F train 18 months ago, parallels were floated to the shooting of four Black teenagers by Bernhard Goetz on a downtown No. 2 train nearly 40 years earlier, among them how quickly battle lines were drawn in each case. Some comparisons are obvious: white men using potentially deadly force to counter a perceived threat posed by Black ones, then claiming self-defense. There are clear differences. Goetz drew a gun and fired after one teen asked him for $5; the young man who suffered the most-grievous wound, Darrell Cabey, told Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin that he and his companions targeted the bespectacled man because he “looked like easy bait.” The teens, who also included Barry Allen, Troy Canty and James Ramseur, fell victim to what might be called New York’s Law of the Jerk: it’s a harsh city to navigate, and if you do something brazen and stupid, it can backfire. In Neely’s case, the acting out stemmed from the mental illness with which he had long struggled. Witnesses said he became belligerent without provocation, railing about the wretchedness of his life and declaring he was ready to die. Anyone familiar with the random, sometimes deadly violence in the subways that’s grown common in recent years might have been frightened by his outburst. Juan Alberto VazquezJuan Alberto VazquezVideo footage shows former U.S. Marine Daniel Penny putting Jordan Neely in a chokehold while aboard a New York City subway, as it pulls into the Broadway-Lafayette St. station in Manhattan on Monday, May 1, 2023. (Juan Alberto Vazquez) Penny, a decorated former Marine, reacted by grabbing Neely from behind, then applying a chokehold while wrestling him to the ground. It’s not known whether they exchanged words before he acted. In its aftermath, though, as the incident made national news, partisans on both sides staked their claims. Penny was accused of murder by critics including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and was hailed by supporters who claimed he had saved lives. A legal defense fund quickly raised millions. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg landed in the middle, charging Penny with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. The trial began with jury selection last week. Neely has been remembered by friends and family as a talented Michael Jackson impersonator, although his likable side years earlier gave way to troubling, sometimes-violent behavior. Penny was lionized for his military service and action taken on a tense subway train that his boosters say underscored his willingness to put himself at risk for others. Potentially more damaging to his fate is that prosecutors are expected to emphasize that his Marine training taught him that a chokehold when applied properly could immobilize an antagonist in as little as 8 seconds, but if deployed for significantly longer, as Penny allegedly did, it could cause death. It will be easy for his attorneys to argue he was justified in his initial use of force. Explaining why he persisted with it for so long could be a tougher case to make to jurors viewing the facts objectively. Of course, one of the problems with cases like these is that emotions often cloud jurors’ judgments. Goetz was acquitted of all charges except illegal gun possession in the December 1984 subway shooting, despite the fact that when he fired his final bullet, which left Cabey paralyzed, the 19-year-old was stretched out across a bench in the subway car, not posing a threat. After Goetz, who fled the city in the wake of the shooting, surrendered to police in Concord, N.H., he confessed that before he fired that fateful bullet, he told Cabey, “You seem to be all right; here’s another.” After the trial, one juror said he and his colleagues acquitted Goetz of firing that shot because they believed he was overwrought at the time he confessed, noting that defense attorney Barry Slotnick claimed his client never uttered those words. The fact that Goetz didn’t testify in his own defense about what he might have said was disregarded by the jurors. The most likely explanation is that the trial turned into a beauty contest, aided by a violent outburst on the witness stand by Ramseur, and jurors perceived the Black teens to be less sympathetic than the mild-looking white man who had shot them before they could seriously threaten his safety. Will something similar happen in the Penny case? The notorious perils of the subways could work in the accused man’s favor, and the defense is expected to call witnesses to the confrontation to testify about their fear of Neely. On the other hand, there is no chance of wild courtroom behavior by Penny’s victim easing the path to juror nullification. Steier is the former editor of the civil-service newspaper The Chief.