The Rear-Naked Choke: How Lethal Is It?

I’ve been thinking about the Jordan Neely/NYC subway situation a bit. Not so much because it resulted in political outrage with Black/White overtones, but because of the comments made about the choke hold that precipitated Neely’s death.

Jordan Neely, who was Black, entered a NYC subway car in a frenzy and began screaming and threatening passengers. This resulted in a physical confrontation with several people, including Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old, White, ex-Marine.

During the struggle, Penny put him into a choke hold and, along with two other men, held him on the ground. At some point, Neely lost consciousness. At some point after that, Penny recognized that Neely was unconscious and released him. He then elevated Neely’s legs, which is a standard way of reviving unconscious people. According to some accounts, Neely regained consciousness, at which time the police arrived. Neely was taken to the hospital and Penny was taken to the police station, questioned, and released, pending an investigation by the Manhattan DA’s office.

Later, at the hospital, Neely was pronounced dead. After an examination by the coroner’s office, the death was pronounced a homicide.

The fact that Penny was not held until charges were filed incensed some people, including media and political figures. Fortune Magazine compared the incident to the Bernie Goetz case. (Goetz was a White man who, in the 1980s, was accused and acquitted of murdering four young Black men after one of them asked him for money.) And US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a press release saying, “This honestly feels like a new low: not being able to clearly condemn a public murder because the victim was of a social status some would deem ‘too low’ to care about.”

Since then, other public figures have voiced their opinions about the incident. As one would expect, they included arguments about race, subway violence, and mental health.

The case will likely drag on because there are some real issues to be decided. The self-defense plea is complicated because, under New York’s penal code, a person who uses deadly force must not only prove that they feared for their own life or someone else’s, but that any reasonable person would have felt the same way.

The defense could also highlight Neely’s criminal record, which includes dozens of arrests, ranging from disorderly conduct to assault. Most recently, in 2021, he was charged with assaulting a 67-year-old woman leaving a subway station. After pleading guilty, he missed a court date, leading to a warrant for his arrest that was still active at the time of his death.

Okay, you may know all of that already. Here’s what I wanted to say…

I watched a fair amount of the TV coverage on this. Many of the commentators were alarmed about the choke. Most mentioned that Penny was a former Marine. Some speculated that, as a Marine, he had learned this choke and knew that it could be lethal. I can understand why it would seem scary to them. The idea that anyone trained to use it could kill anyone at any time for any reason – well, that is pretty scary. It’s why, if someone discovers that you have a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, they might say, “Well, I have something better. A gun!”

An understandable reaction. But it’s largely irrational.

The choke that Penny applied, commonly referred to as a rear-naked choke, is actually very common. In fact, I can say pretty confidently that it is used thousands of times every day. It is taught and practiced in every MMA and BJJ studio in every town and city in every state from California to Maine.

That said, it can be lethal.

There are many questions that will be brought up during the rest of the investigation and the trial, including:

* Did Penny use the choke because he felt his life or the lives of those around him were in danger?

* Did he use it with the intention of killing Penny?

* If he didn’t use it with that intention, did he use it with reckless abandon?

A few facts:

If you secure a rear-naked choke and hold it tightly for five to ten seconds, your opponent will lose consciousness. If you continue to hold it for three to four minutes, your opponent will likely die. Death comes not so much from asphyxiation, but from the blood flow being cut off between the heart and the brain.

But, as I said, this is a choke that is applied safely in grappling contests all the time. It is safe because when grapplers learn to use it, they also learn that it can be lethal and, thus, should not be held for more than a few seconds.

If Penny was an expert – say, a black belt in Jiu Jitsu – he would have known how to apply this choke without endangering Neely’s life. He would have also known that it is an extremely effective restraining hold, virtually impossible to escape from.

That brings me to this: If Penny is proven to be an expert in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or Mixed Martial Arts, it’s going to be hard for him to convince anyone – well me, at least – that he did not either intend to kill Neely or act with recklessness in applying the hold as a choke and then holding it for so long. But if, as I suspect, he learned the choke as a Marine, it is likely that he had only a rudimentary understanding of it. And if that is the case, he most probably used it simply as a restraining hold.

I don’t know what was in Penny’s mind. But if you go to YouTube and look for “pedestrians using martial arts to stop criminals,” you’ll find dozens of videos of men (and even some women) using BJJ techniques to subdue and restrain people in the process of committing a crime. My guess is that Penny had seen such videos and thought that, if he ever had the chance, he would be able to act the hero by applying this technique that he knew so little about.

Which is to say that to determine whether Penny is guilty of homicide or involuntary manslaughter, or guilty of nothing at all, will depend on whether his actions, in applying the choke, came from fear or ignorance or anger or stupidity.