Take-Aways From The Luigi Mangione Hearings

Week One

Hey Everyone,

Apologies for the silence this week. I’ve been busy!

As you know, together with James Patterson, I am writing a book on the murder of United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, who was shot dead in the middle of Manhattan on December 4th last year, allegedly by Luigi Mangione. I’m not going to share any of my exclusive reporting here, obviously, but I will give you my knee-jerk takeaways from the courtroom because what happened there is public.

I was at the kick-off of pre-trial hearings in which Mangione’s defense team is arguing that the contents of Mangione’s backpack (the gun, and the “manifesto” among them) should be inadmissible at trial, because he was locked into conversation with the arresting officers at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania, before being read his Miranda rights, and his backpack was searched without a warrant.

Prosecutors are said to be bringing as many as 28 witnesses, which means, if we move at the current pace, these hearings could go on until Christmas.

Last week we saw on video that by the time Mangione was cuffed and brought out to a police car, a staggering total of 14 law enforcement officers had arrived on the scene. Prosecutors are trying to show that this was because the lead arresting officer, Patrolman Joseph Detwiler, had instantly recognized Mangione as the same person whose features were all over the news in the wake of Thompson’s murder, and that Detwiler also knew from (Fox) news that the murder weapon had not been found. In other words, their point is: the Altoona PD doesn’t normally call 14 officers to a scene for a case of a fake id, which is the official reason they were able to detain Mangione.

In court, we are currently watching the scene of the arrest from an assortment of different police bodycams, so while it’s generally fascinating, parts of it are very repetitive.

What this means for me personally, is that a. I will never be able to forget the very unappealing, sterile interior of this particular McDonalds - white tiled walls with a mustard yellow stripe that runs horizontally at the level of Mangione’s head. And b. I keep humming all the kitschy Christmas music that was being piped out while the arrest was going on!

More seriously, my chief thought so far, is this:

Mangione looks surreally out of place in the courtroom. Sitting there, dressed in expensive suits and shirts, his face pale but serious, he looks almost young enough to have stepped straight out of a classroom at a fancy New England prep school.

One wonders how the spectacle of this will affect a jury.

It also emerged on video footage, that Mangione stayed calm and polite throughout his arrest, even telling an officer he’d got a pocket knife in his jacket, that had been missed on a frisk. He apologized for the trouble he’d caused, while on the ten-minute car ride to the Altoona police station. And he kept his composure during a strip search in the police station.

Thomas Rivers, a corrections officer at a high security prison in Huntingdon, PA, where Mangione was transferred, testified that Mangione and he had lots of chats. The talked about travel; about happiness; about healthcare systems; about literature; about Mangione’s press coverage (apparently he didn’t like being compared to Ted Kaczynski) and so on.

Rivers, a former British military officer told the court repeatedly that he didn’t care about Mangione or his alleged high-profile crime …but his testimony showed otherwise.

Again, what will a jury make of this?

It reminded me of another trial I covered in this newsletter: that of Thomas Barrack, who was accused of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates. (Barrack was a businessman who is now the US ambassador to Turkey). The text messages between Barrack and his young, cherubic-faced aide, Matthew Grimes, also on trial and also in the courtroom, showed that in private Barrack treated his young employee with kindness and dignity.

That went a very long way with jurors, as did Barack’s charm and charisma when he took the stand in his defense.

Barrack and Grimes were acquitted of all charges.

A New York jury is, of course likely to care much more about a murder that was committed in the streets of Manhattan, than a Brooklyn jury cared about an Abu Dhabi sheikh trying to wield influence with Donald Trump. But, the fact remains Mangione is a highly unusual criminal defendant and there are many, many people who have suffered because of US health insurers.

So, as we head into week two: one thing I am very sure of is that when this case does get to trial, it’s going to be a roller-coaster.

And down the road, it’s also going to be a gripping book!