Prosecutors charged 24-year-old Daniel Penny with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a Black man who suffered from mental illness.
Bystander videos captured the encounter, showing Penny with his arm across Neely's neck.
The killing drew national attention and sparked protests: racial justice advocates said Neely was unarmed and didn't deserve to die.
U.S. conservative groups have rallied to Penny, characterizing him as a brave vigilante standing up against crime and lawlessness. His lawyers raised several million dollars in a legal defense fund for him.
Penny's attorneys said Neely was acting in a threatening way and said the former marine reacted to protect himself and his fellow passengers. His lawyer Thomas Kenniff spoke to reporters outside the courthouse:
"All the evidence that we've seen so far and all the evidence we expect to see shows that Danny acted reasonably under very difficult circumstances in a confined, confined environment that none of us would ever want to find ourselves in."
In the minutes before he was killed, Neely, a 30-year-old former Michael Jackson impersonator who struggled with mental illness, had been shouting about how hungry he was and that he was willing to return to jail or die.
That's according to witnesses, who have said Neely did not physically threaten or attack anyone before Penny grabbed him.
Here's Neely family attorney Donte Mills:
"Daniel Penny killed a man. He took a life. And for everyone who thought donating $3 million would somehow make this go away or buy his pass, it's not going to happen."
Penny, who had been released on a $100,000 bond at an earlier hearing, was told to return to court on Oct. 25 for a pretrial hearing.
