Luigi Mangione's livestream stunt aims to get influencers to 'pressure' jurors: former prosecutor
Luigi Mangione's push to livestream his murder trial isn't about transparency, it's a stunt designed to pressure jurors, a former federal prosecutor is arguing.
Lawyers for the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin argued in a Friday filing that the media access rules for his state trial are unconstitutional, and said the proceedings should be livestreamed.
Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Mangione's attorney, said that her team wasn't consulted on media access for the upcoming September trial, and only became aware of a document titled "Media Access: PSNY v. Mangione" from an independent journalist on X.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Fox News Digital he believes Mangione's attorneys want all trial proceedings to be livestreamed to pressure jurors, noting it's unusual for defendants to want more publicity.
"The conventional wisdom is that the defense usually doesn't want high-profile cases broadcast. It can put implicit pressure on jurors to return a guilty verdict," Rahmani said. "Mangione is probably the most popular accused murderer that I've ever covered in the past 25 years. Has a fan base. There's upwards of 10 to 20 percent of the people who have been surveyed who believe that even if he did it, it was justified. And I think the defense knows this, and they know that more attention creates the possibility of jury nullification, or maybe even an acquittal."
Rahmani said the defense is counting on influencers to do what a courtroom sketch never could: keep the case viral.
"Obviously, those handwritten sketches, they're not as interesting as clips that you can post on TikTok or Instagram Reels. The defense knows this, and they want to take advantage of that influencer content and those viral videos," Rahmani said.
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Rahmani's argument tracks with the behavior of Mangione's supporters, who have lined up outside federal and state courthouses for a chance to see the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. One woman, Ashley, part of a group calling itself "The Mangionistas," told the New York Post she camped outside the court in December, and said it wasn't her first time.
"I froze my a-- off last time so I brought a heater, a tent, everything," another individual said.
Rahmani said the strategy by Mangione's attorneys is to hopefully get enough influencers talking about the case to the point where it impacts jurors.
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"Jurors are supposed to decide the case solely based on the facts and evidence in the case, and they certainly shouldn't be on social media or AI or Google getting information about the case. But jurors are ordinary people, and they can't help but be influenced by these outside voices," he said. "And the defense knows this, and they know that more media attention likely means pressure on the jurors or potentially people that may be stealth jurors that may want to get on the panel to actually free Luigi in this case."
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While Rahmani said it's clear what the defense is trying to do, their entire argument for getting the trial livestreamed is a stunt because New York state law prohibits it.
"There's no world where the defense is gonna get its request unless New York law changes or the judge does something extraordinary," Rahmani said. "People will think that there's some sort of cover-up because they've seen other high-profile trials livestreamed and they think that people may think that Luigi Mangione is not getting a fair trial because there's a lack of transparency."
Fox News Digital reached out to Mangione's attorneys for comment.