Daniel Penny’s fate is being decided in a New York City courtroom this week. He’s the former Marine who is being charged with murder after he subdued a mentally ill, drugged-up man who was threatening passengers on a subway car.

However, Daniel Penny isn’t the only person who felt called upon to defend against a violent man on the New York subway. Jordan Williams did, too. The difference is that Jordan Williams was never charged for the death resulting from that self-defense. Based upon reporting, there really seems to be only one obvious difference between the two men.

You’re probably familiar with the Penny story, so I’ll be brief. Penny was riding a subway when Jordan Neely, a black man with a long history of mental illness, drug use, violent behavior, and multiple arrests, entered the subway car. Neely began terrorizing the passengers, threatening them with imminent harm.

Penny used Brazilian Ju-Jitsu (BJJ) skills to restrain Neely, briefly choked him out, and then immediately put him in a restraining hold that did not hinder Neely’s ability to breathe. Neely was alive when paramedics arrived. The police refused to treat the still-living Neely because they were so worried about disease transference.

The New York Times, while acknowledging how terrified passengers were, lies in its coverage, reporting that the passengers watched Neely die from a chokehold; they didn’t. As noted, Penny didn’t maintain a chokehold, and Neely died much later, almost certainly from the combination of illicit drugs and stress.

In sum, Penny saw that Neely was an imminent threat to himself and others and acted to neutralize the threat. He did so in a way that was not deadly, and, indeed, Neely didn’t die on that train. Nevertheless, Manhattan’s openly activist Democrat prosecutor is trying Penny for murder. Significantly, the prosecution is working hard to make the case about race.

However, Daniel Penny isn’t the only person who met a threatening person on the New York subway. So did Jordan Williams, who stabbed a man to death on the subway. NBC New York reports:

The violent incident broke out just after 8 p.m., and police responded to a 911 call of a man stabbed while aboard the train. When officers got to the train station, they found a 36-year-old man who had been stabbed in the chest.

Quedraogo had been rushed to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Law enforcement sources told NBC New York that Quedraogo had been harassing multiple passengers while acting belligerent and erratic toward others on board. He may have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol, sources said, but a toxicology report will determine if that was the case.

Williams' girlfriend was one of the people who Quedraogo had been harassing, with an assistant district attorney revealing in court that Williams told Quedraogo to stop harassing his girlfriend and pushed him away.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds kind of like the Penny-Neely situation, except that a knife to the chest is a whole lot more likely to cause death than a BJJ restraining hold.

In the Williams case, however, the DA was sure that this particular death was righteous self-defense. Again, from NBC New York:

“Under New York law, a person is justified in using deadly physical force when they reasonably believe it is necessary to use such force to defend themselves or others from imminent use of deadly or unlawful physical force,” the DA statement continued.

From the time of his arrest, Williams said he acted in self-defense; a grand jury believed him and refused to indict.

“I was scared in that situation,” Williams said Wednesday, following the grand jury news. “I’m happy that I can get on with my life the way I’d like to.”

Based on the available information, there’s really only one difference between the two men who stepped forward to defend themselves and others. I’ll let you make the call:

Image: YouTube screen grab (cropped). NBC New York screen grab (cropped).

I’m not saying that Jordan Williams should have been indicted. I’m just wondering why Daniel Penny was. It looks very much as if New York City has become the ugly mirror image of Mississippi circa 1925. It’s not what you’ve done or didn’t do; it’s what color your skin is.