Luigi Mangione’s lawyers fight release of 2024 shooting footage

MANHATTAN (CN) — Defense lawyers for Luigi Mangione on Thursday accused prosecutors of trying to taint the Manhattan jury pool by releasing prejudicial security footage to the press.

Mangione’s lawyer Karen Agnifilo kicked off the sixth day of a lengthy pretrial hearing with a direct appeal to the judge, voicing concern with the media’s publication of the scrutinized footage that details the aftermath of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s fatal 2024 shooting — which Mangione is accused of committing.

“The people are plainly attempting to use this suppression hearing as a vehicle to litigate their case in the court of public opinion,” Agnifilo told New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro on Thursday.

With approval from the court, prosecutors shared the two-hour security footage with the press, including Courthouse News, last week. The footage shows a masked shooter approach Thompson on the streets of Midtown in the early morning hours of Dec. 4, 2024. After firing shots, the shooter can be seen fleeing while Thompson lies motionless on the sidewalk.

It takes roughly three minutes for police to arrive; responding officers are seen marking what appears to be shell casings with evidence markers and eventually trying to resuscitate the grounded CEO. An ambulance arrives about 11 minutes after the shooting, and Thompson is loaded on via a stretcher.

Agnifilo said such “graphic and sensitive content” is typically not released by Manhattan prosecutors, “particularly not during a suppression hearing.” She also panned the district attorney’s office for not redacting civilian faces seen in the albeit blurry footage, steps the office took with other pieces of evidence shared with the press.

Since the start of the pretrial suppression hearing last week, in which the defense is trying to deem certain evidence against Mangione inadmissible for trial, prosecutors have been granting press access to some exhibits shown during testimony.

But only a fraction of this particular clip was actually shown in open court, Agnifilo noted.

“Despite having never been publicly released or played in court, the people provided it to the media,” she said, adding, “Predictably, once uploaded, footage from this lengthy video immediately circulated across multiple media platforms, where portions of it have already been viewed by countless members of the public.”

Carro didn’t seem overly concerned. He noted that the jury selection process should weed out any potential prejudices at issue in any high-profile case.

“We’ll deal with it like we’re going to deal with all the press this case has gotten when we select a jury in this case,” Carro said. “I really don’t see a problem with what’s been released.”

It’s been a consistent point of tension for the defense throughout the hearing, which has argued that prosecutors are disseminating evidence to the press that could later be deemed inadmissible by the judge.

Mangione’s attorneys previously sought to seal all bodycam footage from their client’s Dec. 9, 2024, arrest — that footage has made up a bulk of the six-day hearing thus far. Though they also consented to letting the media be heard on the matter and purportedly greenlit a two-minute clip to be shared with the press earlier this week.

More bodycam footage is expected to come; prosecutors asked the court on Wednesday to let them release “several minutes of earlier footage from the same exhibit that provides appropriate context.”

“What you’ve discussed last night, you should release it,” Carro told prosecutors on Thursday.

Prosecutors have elicited testimony from more than a dozen witnesses thus far, a majority of them being Pennsylvania cops who were involved with Mangione’s arrest last December at an Altoona McDonald’s.

Their testimony has unearthed a barrage of new information about the days leading up to Mangione’s arrest. The court saw handwritten checklists, supposedly from Mangione, in which he reminds himself to “keep momentum, FBI slower at night,” and to “check reports for current situation.”

“Pluck eyebrows,” said one entry on a note marked “12/5,” one day after Thompson’s shooting.

And several of the officers testified that, when they got called to their local McDonald’s amid concerns that a customer looked like Thompson’s at-large shooting suspect, they didn’t take it seriously.

Altoona Police Department Lieutenant William Hanelly called the notion “preposterous” on Thursday. He texted one of his officers that he’d buy him a hoagie if the customer was actually the suspect.

“Consider it done then,” replied Officer Joseph Detwiler, according to Hanelly. “I want a large turkey.”

But when Detwiler called Hanelly later, confident that he had the right guy, Hanelly said he phoned the NYPD for direction. The operator seemed just as shocked as he was.

“This is Lieutenant Hanley at the Altoona Police Department in Altoona, Pennsylvania,” Hanelly is heard saying on the phone call, played in court on Thursday.

“Which, excuse me?” the operator replied.

“The shooter, the UHC thing,” Hanelly fired back.

Mangione, draped in a dark gray suit and powder blue dress shirt, feverishly took notes with his head down at the defense table.

In addition to his state murder charges, the 27-year-old is also charged federally for Thompson’s shooting. In that case, he faces the death penalty in the Southern District of New York. But the state case is expected to go to trial first, likely sometime next year.

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