Lights, camera, Luigi?
Luigi Mangione wants as many people as possible to watch his upcoming Manhattan murder trial — demanding it be broadcast live and that a judge take other measures to increase media access to the headline-grabbing case.
The 28-year-old accused killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week urged supreme-court Justice Gregory Carro to ensure his trial is live-streamed — or otherwise give an explanation for why the public won’t get to watch the case in real time.
Jury selection in the case is set to start Sept.8.
Mangione also asked the court to show the trial on a live “overflow” feed within the courthouse so that all journalists or members of the public who turn up to watch the case will be able to follow the action.
“A criminal defendant’s essential right to a public trial, covered by all news reporters seeking to do so, is essential….to the basic administration of justice,” his lawyers wrote to the court Friday.
Live broadcast footage of New York criminal trials is typically banned by the state court system — to protect defendants such as Mangione.
The move is based on a civil-rights law meant to protect the rights of the accused to a fair trial.
Still, state courts have used a courthouse overflow system to increase access in the past, most recently during President Trump’s Manhattan trial over concealing hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has not taken a position on Mangione’s request to broadcast his trial or for an overflow broadcast room within the 100 Centre St. courthouse.
Mangione faces life in prison if convicted at either his state trial or a subsequent federal trial stemming from his alleged cold-blooded killing of Thompson, 50, in a targeted December 2024 hit on a Midtown sidewalk outside the company’s annual investor conference.
Lawyers for the alleged Ivy League assassin separately made a head-scratching claim Friday that prosecutors were somehow involved in deciding which journalists would be promised seats in the courtroom.
The state Office of Court Administration has released plans for a “reserve list” of 68 journalists, presumably composed of reporters who regularly cover New York courts, that will be guaranteed a seat at the trial but has yet to publish that list.
The DA’s office plays no role in determining such a list — and ripped Mangione’s lawyers Friday for making the “baseless” claim that it does.
“The defense’s baseless allegation appears to be nothing more than an attempt to spread misinformation about the case and delegitimize the proceedings,” lead prosecutor Joel Seidemann wrote to the court.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
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