JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, confirmed that Daniel Penny, a Marine Corps veteran recently acquitted of homicide charges, will be his invited guest at the Army-Navy football game on Saturday in Maryland.

Penny will watch the game from a suite alongside president-elect Donald Trump and other figures in Trump’s next administration, including his defence secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth.

“I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage,” Vance posted on X, confirming news first reported by the non-profit publication Notus.

The invitation follows Penny’s acquittal on Monday by a New York jury, which found him not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the 2023 death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man with a history of arrests, mental illness and medical conditions. Medical evidence revealed that Neely had sickle cell trait, an inherited genetic condition that under extreme physiological stress can potentially compromise blood oxygen transport, a factor Penny’s defence team argued could have contributed to his death.

The case sparked nationwide controversy after Penny placed Neely in a chokehold on a New York City subway train in May 2023. Witnesses reported that Neely had been shouting and acting erratically, with one passenger, Juan Alberto Vazquez, telling NBC News at the time that Neely was making aggressive statements about not caring about potential consequences.

It will be Penny’s first public appearance since his acquittal, and a high-profile event with deep ties to the military at that.

Vance was vocal in his support of Penny, describing the prosecution as a “scandal” and praising the jury’s decision.

“Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance posted on X.

Penny, in a sit-down interview with Fox News this week, maintained that he feared for his own safety and that of other passengers during the incident, describing himself as being in a “vulnerable position”.

“The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself,” Penny said. “I’d take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.”