Suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO's killer, Luigi Mangione's legal counsel has accused NYC Mayor, Eric Adams, of impeding his chance at a fair trial. According to her, Mangione's public perp walk was "staged" for the media, thereby politicizing his case.
In the online circulating clips, the lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, can be seen ripping into Mayor Adams for flanking Luigi Mangione as he was being extradited, alongside a dozen NYPD officers and FBI agents. During Monday's arraignment, she appealed to the judge to consider that her client's Constitutional right to a presumption of innocence is being infringed upon.
"Frankly, your honor, the mayor should know more than anyone of the presumption of innocence that he too is afforded when dealing with his own issues," she said at the arraignment Monday morning.
Luigi Mangione's lawyer says her client is being treated like a "ping pong ball": Here's why
On Thursday, Mangione was subjected to a media-heavy perp walk when he was extradited from Pennsylvania to New York to confront his state and federal charges related to Thompson's killing. Following the latter's murder, Mangione was found, and taken into custody within five days after he was spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
As for Friedman Agnifilo, she noted that the "young man" had been cooperative, waived extradition, and had already been detained for a week by that time. She alleged that:
“There was no reason for the NYPD and everybody to have these big assault rifles that frankly I had no idea was in their arsenal and to have all of this press there, the media there, it was perfectly choreographed. And what was the New York City mayor doing at this press conference? That just made it utterly political.”
She went on, tying the allegations in with Mayor Adams' corruption case, in which he maintains his innocence. Adams stands accused of allegedly accepting bribes from the Turkish government. She pointed out that the Mayor of all people should know the importance of the presumption of innocence. She accused him of trying to divert the media's attention from his own misgivings.
As for the walk, she noted that it was "the biggest staged perp walk I've ever seen in my career," and was highly "unnecessary," and "unconstitutional." She also claimed that Luigi Mangione is "being treated like a human ping pong ball between these warring jurisdictions."
As reported by Business Insider, Adams cited his reasoning for walking beside the alleged gunman:
"I wanted to look him in the eye to say that, 'You carried out this terrorist act in my city, the city that the people of New York love,' and I wanted to be there to show the symbolism of that."
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Luigi Mangione will now stand trial for both state and federal charges, the former of which, if convicted, could sentence him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The federal charges, on the other hand, could bring in the death penalty, should prosecutors choose to seek it.
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