A confrontation on a New York City subway car Monday ended with Jordan Neely dead. According to the New York Daily News, the 30-year-old homeless man had been shouting, throwing garbage at, and otherwise harassing other passengers when an ex-Marine intervened. The pair got into an argument, then a fight, and during the brawl the former Marine “put the victim in a chokehold and tried to restrain him.”

Video of the incident shows Neely continuing to struggle while in the chokehold as another man tries to restrain his arms. A third man hovers above Neely, seemingly in the case that his assistance becomes necessary. It wasn’t, and Neely fell unconscious on the train as the former Marine held him in the chokehold. Neely was eventually pronounced dead at a Manhattan hospital.

On Wednesday, the city’s medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide. Importantly, the label is not synonymous with “murder,” which describes a crime. “Homicide,” in this context, simply means that his death was caused by the actions of another person, and is not a statement of criminal guilt.

The distinction was lost on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). On Wednesday evening, Ocasio-Cortez reached her own judgement, and scolded the New York Times for not sharing it.

“Jordan Neely was murdered,” she proclaimed. “But bc Jordan was houseless and crying for food in a time when the city is raising rents and stripping services to militarize itself while many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected w/ passive headlines + no charges. It’s disgusting.”

Jordan Neely was murdered.

But bc Jordan was houseless and crying for food in a time when the city is raising rents and stripping services to militarize itself while many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected w/ passive headlines + no charges.

It’s disgusting. https://t.co/YJeQp9bbgE

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 3, 2023

Partisans have long demanded the media — in this case the Times — use their preferred, and often charged, language in describing events. Despite Ocasio-Cortez’s demands, the Times should not follow her lead and smear a man, who has not been charged with murder, as a murderer.

Media outlets opt for more nuanced language for a reason: calling someone a murderer when they have not been convicted of murder — and in this case, not even charged — is not only inaccurate, it’s libelous.

As for the rest of Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet, Neely did not have a home and was indicating that he was in need of sustenance prior to the physical altercation. But there is no evidence he was killed because of his socioeconomic status.

The continued attention of two additional men as well as the Marine accused of murder by the congresswoman speaks to the threat that the people on the train believed the man to be. And Neely’s own extensive rap sheet — he had over 40 prior arrests on his record and was wanted for punching a 67-year-old woman in the face at the time of his death — indicates the potential that the situation could have gotten worse for those around him.

Moreover, the “murderer” is not being “protected.” The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is conducting a “rigorous ongoing investigation” that will include a review of the Medical Examiner’s report, an assessment of “all available video and photo footage, and interviews with “as many witnesses as possible” according to a spokesman. That investigation could result in no charges, charges of a lesser crime than murder, or the murder charges Ocasio-Cortez is evidently hoping for.

Even that last outcome would not justify her statement though, as the the DA’s office would then need to prove the man’s guilt before a jury of his peers.

And even if that jury, in the possession of far more information than the congresswoman has now,  ultimately agreed with her evaluation, that would not vindicate her highly inappropriate declaration at the time she made it.

As an elected official — and one of the most recognizable ones in the country at that — Ocasio-Cortez’s public pronouncements carry weight among the public, the media, and, indeed, in the DA’s office. That means that her very public position on what should happen to a private citizen involved in a complex, tragic event that occurred under circumstances that even those in the subway car cannot fully consider yet, is prejudicial.

The DA’s office might be driven toward one result or another by virtue of Ocasio-Cortez’s declaration. Members of the media members might be more inclined to follow suit and opine irresponsibly. And people who know and interact with the murderer in his personal life might treat him differently.

In other words, she’s turned what everyone — regardless of their evaluation of the Marine’s actions — can recognize as a tragedy and systemic failure into a political spectacle; one that prejudices the legal case against a private citizen.

This irresponsible tendency isn’t exclusive to the left. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a colleague of Ocasio-Cortez, has repeatedly claimed Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt was murdered. She was not, of course, and thankfully the media has not followed Greene’s lead in declaring the killing a murder.

Ocasio-Cortez is welcome to her own opinion about the immediate and broader societal causes of Neely’s death. But so long as she remains an enormously influential legislator with an unfathomably large platform, she should refrain from demanding the media adopt her own partisan beliefs in its reporting.

The post AOC Demands Media Accuse a Private Citizen — Who Has Not Been Charged with Murder — Of Murder first appeared on Mediaite.

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