Luigi Mangione Stream Aims to Sway Jurors: Ex-Prosecutor

Luigi Mangione’s bid to have his murder trial livestreamed is not a good-faith push for transparency, but a calculated move aimed at influencing jurors, according to a former federal prosecutor.

Attorneys for Mangione, who is accused in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, argued in a Friday court filing that the media access rules governing his state trial are unconstitutional. They urged the court to allow the proceedings to be livestreamed.

Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Mangione’s lawyer, said the defense team was not consulted about media access plans for the upcoming September trial. She said they learned of a document titled “Media Access: PSNY v. Mangione” only after an independent journalist posted about it on X.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told News Outlet that he believes Mangione’s legal team is seeking wall-to-wall livestream access as a way to put pressure on jurors. He noted that it is uncommon for criminal defendants, particularly in high-profile murder cases, to ask for more publicity rather than less.

“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 strategy appears to rely on influencers and online attention to accomplish what traditional courtroom sketches cannot: keeping the Mangione case in the public spotlight and fueling its viral momentum.

“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.

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.

READ MORE: Drunk Cruise Passenger Accused of Attacking Kids Playing Tag

“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.

“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.”

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.”

News Outlet reached out to Mangione’s attorneys for comment.