Bernhard Goetz, then a 37-year-old electronics technician, defended himself from a group of would-be robbers on a New York City subway car Dec. 22, 1984.

Four decades later, another New York straphanger argued self-defense to beat homicide charges in another Big Apple subway vigilante case.

In May 2023, Daniel Penny, a 26-year-old Marine veteran who was studying architecture at a New York college, placed 30-year-old Jordan Neely in a headlock to stop a violent outburst that frightened passengers and involved threats about killing them and going to prison for life. 

Jurors found Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide earlier this month after prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss the most serious charge of manslaughter.

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The trials of Goetz and Penny were both highly politicized and scrutinized because of the subjects’ races. Goetz and Penny are both White. Neely and the four men Goetz shot are Black. Legal scholars have spent years discussing whether Goetz would have shot White teens under similar circumstances. Penny’s defense repeatedly accused prosecutors of trying to unfairly inject racial undertones into a trial that did not involve hate crime charges.

Both cases also reflect deeply held public sentiment that crime was getting out of control in New York City. Goetz had been mugged multiple times in the past, which is why he said he was carrying a handgun. Penny put Neely in a chokehold after a spate of subway incidents involving mentally ill homeless people attacking passengers, telling police, “These guys are pushing people in front of trains and stuff.”

Violent crime dropped dramatically in New York City in the late 1990s and 2000s, but some crimes, robberies in particular, have risen again after a wave of anti-police rioting in 2020 and left-wing political movement to “defund the police.” 

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Goetz was acquitted on attempted murder charges but spent 8½ months in jail for possessing the handgun he used to defend himself without a license.

The case involved four teens — Darrell Cabey, James Ramseur, Troy Canty and Barry Allen. The first two were armed with sharpened screwdrivers, which they claimed were not weapons but tools to break into coin boxes in arcade games, according to court records. 

They got on a Manhattan-bound No. 2 train in the Bronx and surrounded Goetz after he boarded at the 14th Street station in Manhattan and sat down by himself.

Goetz had an unlicensed .38-caliber pistol in his belt loaded with five rounds. 

The teens approached Goetz, and without displaying any weapons, Canty told him, “Give me $5.”

Rather than being robbed, Goetz pulled out the gun and fired four shots – striking Canty in the chest and Allen in the back. Another round went through Ramseur’s arm and into his side. The fourth shot missed Cabey. Goetz waited a moment, then fired his last shot at Cabey, severing his spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed.

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“I said, ‘You seem to be all right, here’s another,’” Goetz later told detectives. “If I was a little more under self-control … I would have put the barrel against his forehead and fired.” 

He added that if he’d been carrying more bullets, he would have kept shooting.

The conductor stopped the train and radioed police. Goetz jumped off the train and fled on foot.

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The case sparked a media frenzy, and Goetz surrendered to police in Concord, New Hampshire, nine days later. He told them he’d been illegally carrying a pistol since 1981, when he had been “maimed” during a prior mugging. He also said that, on multiple occasions, he’d warded off other would-be robbers by brandishing the weapon and not firing.

Because of those prior attacks, he said, he knew the teens on the train wanted to rob him based on their behavior and the looks on their faces. Before the case went to trial, at least two of the teens reportedly admitted they were going to rob him, but a court considered those statements hearsay.

Goetz did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.