The manslaughter trial of former Marine, Daniel Penny, highlights one of the most troubling trends of recent American history: the corruption of justice by racial politics. We do not have the rule of law unless the system protects everyone equally, but in places like New York, the system picks winners and losers based on political affiliation and skin color.

The late vagrant, prolific criminal, and “Michael Jackson impersonator” Jordan Neely is exactly the type of person the system champions. Penny, a confident white man and Good Samaritan, is the system’s perfect idea of a villain.

Unlike Donald Trump, Penny was not a politician when he became a target of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s  retribution disguised as “justice.” But Penny unknowingly entered the political arena when he decided to do something noble, by guarding terrified subway passengers from Neely, a deranged stranger threatening to kill them. Unbeknownst to him, the stranger was Penny’s legal and moral superior in the eyes of the law.

Prosecutors let the cat out of the bag when, in the trial’s opening, they called Penny “white man” repeatedly and painted Penny as a callous monster who did not see Neely’s “humanity.” Of course, when Penny confronted Neely, no one in that subway car was thinking of the homeless man’s humanity, so much as they were thinking of preserving their lives. While New Yorkers are accustomed to erratic vagrants, Neely’s behavior was threatening enough to leave passengers in fear for their lives. “This was the first time in my life where I took a moment, because I thought that I was going to die in this situation,” one witness told the jury.

The acute danger that Penny tried to address has forced the prosecution to concede that Penny’s conduct was, at least initially, commendable. But they insist Penny became reckless with Neely’s life by holding him longer than necessary, while there were no police on the scene, a crowd of bystanders in panic, and Neely struggling to resist. Penny let go seconds after Neely lost consciousness and placed him in the recovery position to help him breathe. One black witness told police, “I don’t think he [Penny] did nothing wrong…. I was calling 911. They took mad [very] long to come.”

The case suggesting Penny overreacted is flimsy, not to mention cynical: Prosecutors and judges in New York routinely set dangerous people like Jordan Neely free to roam. In the eyes of the prosecutors, Penny’s real crime was not restraining Neely for too long or too forcefully—it was daring to lay his hands on a black man, regardless of how dangerously insane he was and no matter how seriously that man may have harmed innocent people.

There is no evidence that Penny’s actions had anything to do with race or that he had any motive except a manly protector’s instinct. But from its inception, the case has been defined by the familiar “white aggressor-black victim” dynamic that is often featured in cases involving police actions dealing with uncooperative suspects when they happen to be black.

There is good reason to believe that crucial evidence against Penny was tainted by this prejudicial framing. The prosecution’s key witness, medical examiner Cynthia Harris, said she determined that Neely died of a chokehold before seeing his toxicology and after watching cellphone video of Penny’s neck restraint, which would have told her right away that she was dealing with a racially charged case that would receive significant publicity.

Considering the politics of New York City, it is reasonable to question the integrity of Harris’s medical opinion. Neely was high on the potent synthetic cannabinoid, K2, which Penny’s lawyers argue may have contributed to his death, and he had a faint pulse when police got to the scene. But Harris said that, had Neely had enough fentanyl in his system to kill an elephant, it would not change her opinion that Neely died from asphyxia. We have heard similar testimony passed off as “expert” science in other cases against white defendants.

The passionate rhetoric from prosecutors has a familiar feel. Neely “demanded to be seen,” they said in their opening. Neely died “on the dirty floor of an uptown F train.” To Penny, Neely “didn’t deserve even the minimum modicum of humanity.” Penny should have run with the herd and allowed Neely to act on his threats: “We pass people like Jordan Neely every day in our city. As New Yorkers we train ourselves not to engage, not to make eye contact, to pretend that people like Jordan Neely are not there.”

Penny is up against a cruel, deranged system that sees capable white men as enemies upon whom the vengeance of the weak must be unleashed All Penny can now do is pray that the jury respects his sacrifice more than they hate his skin color.