Warriors will always have to deal with guilt and mourning. It is unfortunate that the guilt and mourning reside almost entirely with those asked to do the dirty work. Choosing to fight for the right reasons can assuage this guilt. Mourning can lessen it. But all warriors or erstwhile warriors will need to understand that, just like rucksack, ammunition, water, and food, guilt and mourning will be among the things they carry. They will shoulder it all for the society they fight for.

That’s Navy Cross recipient, Marine Corps veteran, and Rhodes Scholar Karl Marlantes, from his excellent memoir of combat in Vietnam, What It Is Like to Go to War. I share this passage because New York City subway hero Daniel Penny has joined the fraternity of Marlantes and all others who have taken the life of a fellow human and because he alone will live with it.

The “dirty work” that Penny did was to protect others, to save his fellow subway passengers from a deranged and violent career criminal named Jordan Neely, a man with 42 prior arrests who was somehow still on the streets of New York.

And yet here was the 26-year-old Penny, who until just days ago was unsure whether he’d spend the next 14 years of his life in prison. Last week, a Manhattan jury cleared him of reckless homicide, and then on Monday, it rightly acquitted him of a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter.

Those charges should never have been brought. Neely, having been placed in a carotid restraint by Penny, was still alive when police arrived on the scene. Indeed, when Penny was interrogated by New York City cops afterward, he had no idea that Neely had died. Even so, the defense pathologist blamed “the combined effect of sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint, and the synthetic marijuana” for Neely’s death, and even the state’s medical examiner conceded that the deceased had enough drugs in him “to put down an elephant.”

This, then, was a malicious, race-based prosecution, and woke Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was responsible for it. So, while we wonder what comes next for Daniel Penny, we might ask ourselves: What comes next for this despicable prosecutor?

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has an idea. He’s suggesting that Penny should turn the tables of lawfare on its purveyor.

“Alvin Bragg is an absolute catastrophe,” said Cruz in a statement. “First, he indicted Donald Trump in a partisan case, and then he indicted Daniel Penny for saving the lives of other subway passengers from a deranged lunatic threatening to kill everyone. Penny should sue Bragg for malicious prosecution and hold this rogue Soros prosecutor accountable.”

Yesterday, Penny’s defense attorney, Steven Raiser, picked up on this possibility. “Just like Danny said in his interview, it was like they wanted to try and get him on something,” Raiser noted. “They knew they weren’t going to be able to get him, so they had to get rid of that top count in order to get to that second count, just in hopes that maybe they could pull out a win here, and they were unsuccessful, thank God.”

Penny, meanwhile, told his side of the story to Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who herself is a former DA and judge. “He blew me away,” said Pirro. “He is humble. He thinks that he’s serving people, and he’s willing to live with it and do it again.” As for Bragg, Pirro didn’t mince words. “It’s time for you to say goodbye,” she said. “You are a political prosecutor. You ruined this man’s life, and it’s time somebody brought a civil rights violation or investigation against him.”

Said Penny: “It really showed their arrogance, their lack of understanding of what’s really happening, and really what the public perception of crime [is], and no matter what everyone else says on the news, it’s pretty prevalent. It just showed their arrogance that they were gonna get me on something — that’s what it felt like.”

Why did Penny do what he did? “I’m not a confrontational person,” he said. At the same time, though, he didn’t think he had a choice — not as a Marine or as a man. “I would not be able to live with myself if I didn’t do anything in that situation and someone got hurt. I would feel guilty for the rest of my life. All people, if they’re in a position to help, should always help. I think that’s the New York thing to do; it’s the American thing to do.”