Prosecutors in the trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran, who put a Michael Jackson impersonator, Jordan Neely, in a fatal chokehold on a New York subway last year, rested their case on Monday. The defense called Mr. Penny’s sister as its first witness.

“You love your brother, right?” Defense attorney Thomas Kenniff asked a shy Jacqueline Penny, the older sister of his client, at Manhattan criminal court on Monday afternoon. She replied with a convincing, and yet soft spoken, “yes”.

“And you know, he is on trial?” Mr. Kenniff added, “you wouldn’t lie for him?” Ms. Penny shook her head, and glanced over at her brother, who was sitting at the defense table.  

Mr. Penny is charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminal negligent homicide in the death of Neely, a street performer known for his Michael Jackson impersonations on subway platforms and on Times Square. Mr. Penny pleaded not guilty to the charges, which combined carry a maximum sentence of 19 years in prison.  

Neely and Mr. Penny happened to be in the same subway car last year. The street performer, who was homeless at the time, entered the train and began shouting and acting aggressively, causing some passengers to say they feared for their lives, they would testify. Mr. Penny grabbed Neely from behind, placed him in a chokehold and took him down to the floor. He kept holding him even after the train had arrived at the next station and the doors were open. When officers arrived at the scene, Neely was unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the hospital about an hour later.    

Most of Monday, both parties fired questions at the medical examiner, doctor Cynthia Harris, who performed the autopsy on Neely and ruled that his death was caused by asphyxiation, or strangulation. 

Defense attorney Steven Raiser tried in vain to get Dr. Harris to say that the death could have also been caused by severely “sickled” red blood cells, which were found in Neely’s body, or by the synthetic cannabinoid K2, also known as spice, which was detected in his toxicology report. 

But the doctor explained over and over again that the “sickling crisis” (when red blood cells cannot deliver oxygen) was triggered by the lack of oxygen in his body, which was caused by the chokehold Mr. Penny had placed Neely in. 

After the lengthy and medically challenging examination of the doctor, assistant district attorney Dafna Yoran, who is prosecuting the case on behalf of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, rested her case. 

The defense called its first two witnesses on Monday, Mr. Penny’s sister and Mr. Penny’s childhood friend. Both women spoke briefly but lovingly about the 26-year-old Marine veteran, who grew up in West Islip on Long Island.   

“He is my younger brother,” Ms. Penny, who works as an accountant and now lives in Miami, Florida, testified. “There is a year between us. We have two younger sisters.” She added, “we are very close.” 

Ms. Penny described West Islip as a “small town,” which she called, “beachy”, saying, “we were close to our neighbors, people knew each other through school, and sports.”  She said that she and “Danny” as Mr. Kenniff refers to him, shared the same interests. “We liked to read together.” And that they also went boating, and fishing, and that Mr. Penny played the up-right bass, and was very good at lacrosse.  When asked about her parent’s separation, which happened when she and her brother were in high school, she said that it was “very difficult… luckily we had each other as a support system.”

A year after high school, Ms. Penny told the jury, her brother enlisted in the Marines. She admitted that she was worried, and also surprised because he was “soft spoken,” but that he had always been “patriotic.” 

Alexandra Fay, who works for as an event designer for an “experience creative agency” in New York, testified she has known Mr. Penny “since kindergarten.” She painted a similar picture of her “best friend,” a kind and honest small town boy, growing up in what she referred to as the “Westlip bubble”, a place where “everyone knows each other.” 

When an assistant district attorney, Jillian Shartrand, another prosecutor, asked Ms, Fray if she had donated to Mr. Penny’s campaign fund, she replied, she had. But when Ms. Shartrand asked if she was aware that the online campaign had raised over $3 million dollars, Mr. Kenniff called out “objection” so loud that it drowned out the words “$3 million.” The judge struck the question from the record. 

The defense plans to call more witnesses on Tuesday.