Luigi Mangione: the making of a modern martyr
The ongoing fiasco of Luigi Mangione’s case is laying bare systemic corruption for all to see. Meanwhile, the long-simmering discontent of the American people is being stoked to boiling point.
This is my second article about the Luigi Mangione case; catch up on the first one here.
Scary things are happening in the United States right now. Its people have many reasons to be worried: an increasingly fascist administration, a collapsing economy, gun violence, the list goes on...
But the country’s elites, those who hold all the wealth and power, fear only one thing: the people. Specifically, the people rallying together to stand up against their oppressors.
Luigi Mangione and his large following of supporters are the embodiment of that fear.
Four months on from his arrest, Luigi’s case, already highly politicised from the start, is spiralling into a spectacle of such flagrant injustice that it borders on satire. Mainstream media “reporting” on the case has been largely a state-sanctioned smear campaign. Salacious rumour-mongering and heavy-handed statements made by public figures have further distorted the discourse.
Each new development (I will go into them) seems designed less to uphold law and order and more to condemn and discredit; not just Luigi, but the very idea of public dissent. Due process and presumption of innocence, every citizen’s right, are markedly absent.
In short: it’s a public scapegoating and a warning to the populace to stay in line. The people see him as a saviour, the powerful see him as a danger. And with recent renewed threats of the death penalty, all of this is making Luigi Mangione into a modern martyr.
The chaos is happening on two fronts: the legal case proceedings (of which there are three), and the public court of opinion (i.e. the media circus that surrounds the case).
In this piece I will cover
Key events, starting with Luigi’s arrest
How the prosecution is acting in bad faith
The spectacle being made of Luigi in the media
The ways the public are supporting Luigi
What it all means (probably)
It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. Trigger warning for those who are allergic to injustice.
Let’s start from the beginning.
A very dangerous murder
The murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was always more than a random act of violence. The words “deny”, “defend”, and “depose” on the bullet shell casings found at the scene of the crime have become a mantra for Americans who oppose their country’s exploitative health insurance industry. If people are getting bankrupted by their health insurance, others must be getting rich off their ruin. People like Thompson.
The days following Thompson’s murder saw the rich panicking, and the general public watching with glee. “Wanted” posters of other healthcare CEOs went up around New York city, while CEOs had their webpages and LinkedIn profiles taken down.
Nobody seemed to mourn Thompson. Some openly celebrated his murder; one redditor said, in reference to the CCTV footage of the shooting: “Watching Brian Thompson crawling on the ground healed something in me”. Others condemned the murder, but expressed understanding and even sympathy for the shooter, who became an instant folk hero.
The matter of healthcare even transcended political divides, proving itself a truly bipartisan issue when Ben Shapiro’s own followers turned against him for criticising the murder of Thompson. People on both left and right were expressing their open dissent for the status quo, to the point of condoning, or at least excusing, murder.
A botched arrest
We’ve all seen the photo of Luigi during his arrest in a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on 9 December 2024, and we’ve all seen the various surveillance images of the suspected shooter in New York. We’ve probably all puzzled over how they all look like different people, and wondered how the images, which are blurry and/or show a man with most of his face covered, could have been used to identify someone.
A rather salacious tell-all article run in New York Magazine about Jessica Tisch, the nepo baby NYPD Commissioner, revealed the movements of law enforcement immediately after the shooting: “Tisch had authorized the department to throw everything at finding the shooter: drones, canines, scuba divers, hundreds of detectives and beat cops”. She also scoured social media looking for someone “hot enough to be the guy in the surveillance footage.”
It goes without saying that had the murdered person not been the CEO of a multi-billion dollar health insurance company (however little his death was mourned by the public) the NYPD would not have pulled out all the stops to find the killer. How many people are murdered in New York city in a week? How many of those get anything close to this kind of attention?
The article also reveals how it was a priority for Tisch to catch the suspected shooter before the “Feds” – the federal authorities, which are separate to the state-level NYPD. It became a race to make the arrest, and the case has since become a turf war between the NYDP and the Feds, with both pressing separate sets of charges.
Shortly after his arrest, Luigi took on Pennsylvania lawyer Thomas Dickie as his defense attorney. On 13 March, Dickey filed a pretrial omnibus motion in PA that shed light on the events of Luigi’s arrest, which had up till then been shrouded in mystery.
It was strange that Luigi’s arrest (the result of a McDonald’s employee supposedly recognising his face and calling 911) happened in a public place, yet there was no footage captured by onlookers. People manage to film during hurricanes and floods, yet nobody in that McDonald's took even a snap of the arrest in the most high-profile murder case of the moment? We’ve still seen no police bodycam footage, either. Only that one photo that went viral for its incongruous glamour.
It has been well-publicised that Luigi was arrested with a backpack conveniently full of incriminating evidence, including a 3D printed gun and handwritten document, erroneously branded a manifesto. The choice of the word manifesto, as Dickey points out in the motion, was made by a police officer. The word since spread like wildfire, and has been hugely damaging, fuelling the perception of guilt.
Anyway, the police are known to plant evidence, so plenty of people are not convinced of the supposed evidence found on Luigi’s person. Indeed, many have thrown doubt on the authenticity of the document, comparing its clunky writing style to Luigi’s, which is markedly different.
In addition, according to Dickey’s motion, Luigi was unlawfully detained for 17 minutes without having his Miranda rights read to him. He then was told he was “not in custody”, despite being backed up against a wall by up to ten police officers, and having been frisked and had his ID and belongings taken from him.
The police officers also unlawfully opened items that were found on Luigi, including using a knife to open a sealed package, all without a search warrant; highly illegal.
I won’t go into everything, but Luigi had all manner of rights violated that day. You can read the entire motion here. Finally he was arrested for the crime of providing police with a fake ID.
All of these fumbles have given Dickey grounds to declare Luigi’s arrest unlawful, and any “evidence” obtained from this unlawful arrest “fruit of the poisonous tree”. In the motion he requests the suppression of this “evidence”, meaning it would be inadmissible in court.
An assumption of guilt
Let’s not forget that at the time of writing, Luigi is still a suspect – albeit the main suspect – for the shooting. But since the moment of his arrest, there have been no great efforts to use the word “alleged”, with many people simply referring to him as the shooter.
The staged perp walk on 19 December 2024 in New York (where Luigi was extradited from Pennsylvania) was a transparent attempt to project the impression of guilt. Bafflingly, the New York mayor Eric Adams was in attendance, and made a statement to the press: “I want to look him in the eye and state that 'you carried out this terrorist act in my city, the city that this, the people of New York, love’.”
Unhinged words, especially from a man who was himself indicted earlier that year on charges of corruption. As Luigi’s New York lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo (aka KFA), stated at a court hearing on 23 December: “the mayor should know more than anyone of the presumption of innocence that he too is afforded when he [is] dealing with his own issues. And frankly, I submit that he was just trying to detract from those issues by making a spectacle of Mr. Mangione.”
Aside from taking part in the perp walk, mayor Eric Adams also found time to get into, as KFA put it, “full hair and makeup” (or just makeup I suppose, as he’s got no hair on his head) to give an interview for a documentary about Luigi. More on that later.
The charges against Adams have since been dropped. Seven prosecutors resigned in protest.
Of course, it’s no secret that the term “justice” system is a misnomer. It’s more a system to protect the wealthy and well-connected, and if you’re neither of those things… well, good luck. There’s supposed to be due process to protect you, but as we are seeing in Luigi’s case, that can’t be taken for granted, and anything could happen.
A muddled and messy legal battle
As Luigi was being extradited to New York to face state charges there, his lawyers were asked by the press if the “Feds were stealing the case?” This turned out to be exactly what happened.
Currently Luigi and his team of lawyers (including Thomas Dickey in Pennsylvania and KFA in New York) are facing off against three sets of charges: from the state of Pennsylvania, the state of New York, and the Feds.
They include forgery, criminal possession of a weapon, and murder in the first and second degree. But the ones that have drawn the most attention are the NY state charge of “terrorism” and the federal charges of “stalking” and, most significantly of all, “Murder through use of a firearm”. The last is a capital offense, meaning it is eligible for the death penalty.
As KFA said in a statement on 18 December 2024: “The federal government's reported decision to pile on top of an already overcharged first-degree murder and state terror case is highly unusual and raises serious constitutional and statutory double jeopardy concerns.”
Most people agree these charges are excessive. Terrorism? Who is feeling terrorised? Exploitative healthcare CEOs maybe… Mass school shooters (a crime much more akin to terrorism that killing one man) are not treated nearly as harshly. Even serial killers rarely get executed in the US.
There was much furore recently when Pam Bondi, the United States Attorney General, released a statement directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi – even though he hasn’t yet been indicted by the Feds. This was also part of a wider drive in the Trump administration to promote the death penalty, which… I’m not even going to go into that here. KFA released a powerful statement in response, which included these two bangers:
“While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi. By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people.”
“This is a corrupt web of government dysfunction and one-upmanship. Luigi is caught in a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors, except the trophy is a young man’s life.”
KFA has since filed a motion to preclude the government from seeking the death penalty. In this hard-hitting motion, she calls out Pam Bondi’s using her statements about Luigi to launch a new Instagram account, as well as the breaching of death penalty protocol, and many other factors – I recommend a read.
The whole matter caused a lot of upset amongst Luigi supporters but, as the death penalty had always been on the table, nothing much had materially changed. Nothing except a flurry of new donations that poured in to the GiveSendGo fund set up to help Luigi with his legal fees.
Indeed, the only consolation for Luigi supporters is that each time another injustice is inflicted on him, it always triggers a boost in donations.
A case of missing evidence
Luigi was arraigned in New York by state prosecutors on 23 December 2024. On 21 March 2025 KFA filed a motion demanding missing evidence from the prosecution, including witness statements and 130 pages of grand jury testimony. Full discovery was supposed to be handed over within 20 days of the arraignment; 88 days had passed when she filed her motion. Now at the time of writing, over 111 days have passed.
The federal prosecution also wanted to prevent Luigi having access to a laptop to view the evidence in his own case; evidence that is, to use the state prosecutor’s words, “voluminous” – over 2 terrabytes, or 15,000 pages. A laptop for viewing evidence is a normal request that Luigi’s fellow famous inmate Diddy was granted. In a letter to the court on 26 March, KFA goes into it – read it if you want a breakdown of all the ways the prosecution are acting up. More on this later.
During my research I watched a YouTube video on the matter of missing discovery, and found this in the comments section:
If there is watertight evidence that proves Luigi to be the shooter, the case is in the bag for the prosecution. They have nothing to worry about. Either way, they are legally required to hand over that discovery. What possible motive could they have for not complying with this legal requirement? The only one I can think of is that the “evidence” is insufficient, if not non-existent, and the only recourse they have left is to mess around and attempt to make the defense’s job harder. It’s a classic tactic of a losing party: you can’t win through honest means, so you try to rattle your opponent instead.
In a statement made to the press on 21 February, after a court hearing, KFA said that she was shocked to see a documentary on HBO about Luigi, featuring the Chief of Detectives and New York City Mayor discussing evidence, police paperwork, and forensics that she herself had not yet seen. The prosecution were leaking evidence to the media and Luigi’s lawyers were learning about it by watching HBO?
KFA made her statement outside the courthouse in which she had shortly beforehand been cut off by the judge and unable to make all the remarks she wished to. Luigi was present at that hearing, and was escorted with his usual entourage of armed guards, in shackles and a bulletproof vest.
Why the vest, which KFA described as a “very serious vest”? Luigi had never been put in a bulletproof vest up till that point. During this court appearance he was visible to the public for seconds, while going in and out of the courtroom. Given the crowds of Luigi supporters inside and outside the court, an attack seemed unlikely.
Neither did it appear that Luigi’s wellbeing was a top priority to the authorities; during his December perp walk, in which he was exposed for a considerably longer amount of time out in the bitingly cold New York air, he didn’t even get a jacket, let alone a bulletproof vest.
Let’s be real: the purpose of the bulletproof vest was to project an image of Luigi as dangerous. Unfortunately for them, as with everything else they dress him in, it just ended up looking like haute couture.
KFA also requested Luigi’s shackles be removed in the courtroom, as he had thus far been compliant and well-behaved. The judge initially agreed, but then changed his mind after conferring with the prosecution. KFA had to help Luigi to drink water, as his cuffed hands were shackled to his waist.
Luigi’s shackled ankles became another iconic image, setting the Internet ablaze. A TikTok artist was inspired to create a painting of it, titled The System is Broken, and after much demand, began selling prints, with 15% of the profits going toward Luigi’s legal fund. Over $200 has been donated from this so far.
A strategy of delay, deflect, distract
So we’ve established that the prosecution have been missing their legal deadlines by quite significant degrees. Because of the delay in receiving discovery, KFA requested an extension to file motions, which the prosecution tried to block in a letter to the court on 25 March.
In the same letter, the prosecution attempt to claim that Luigi is a danger to witnesses (from prison?) and that he was getting “special treatment” as he was allowed to change into normal clothes for his court appearances. This is a very normal thing for defendants appearing in court, but they deemed it “accommodation for defendant’s fashion needs”. They claim Luigi’s green sweater on his 21 February court appearance “fanned the flames of public attention” and even cite a Fox News(!) article headlined Luigi Mangione winks at supporters with green sweater under bulletproof vest. The pettiness is unmatched.
The letter also complains of two heart-shaped notes (see image below) that were smuggled into Luigi’s socks that day, to support their claim of “special treatment” and his being a “danger”. One of these notes (the one on the right) was addressed to someone called “Joan”. KFA had to deal with this in her response letter on 26 March, saying, "The District Attorney’s Office ostensibly realized the innocent nature of this event, and that it was not a genuine danger or concern, as they did not bother to alert the Court at the time.”
Just summarising that nonsense was exasperating and boring for me. What a waste of everyone’s time. At least Karen managed to throw in some shade in her letter: "Most respectfully, perhaps if the District Attorney’s Office focused more on their statutory obligations and Mr. Mangione’s constitutional rights—and less on the color of Mr. Mangione’s sweater at the court appearance (notably, one of the prosecutors also wore green to court) and whether or not he chose not to wear socks—the prosecutors would have been able to timely meet their discovery obligations.”
Meanwhile, Luigi’s lawyers were not even permitted access to him before and after that public court appearance – so much for “special treatment”. Every delay and ounce of energy expended by the defense addressing silly things like heart-shaped notes in socks is racking up Luigi’s legal bill and distracting us all from the actual issue at hand. If the evidence against Luigi were so compelling, it would be an open-and-shut case, and there would surely be no need to play stupid games of deflection like this.
One thing is for sure: the prosecution is playing dirty.
A media circus
This entire case has been sensationalised from the very beginning, and Luigi has become an object of public fascination. Understandable, given the political nature of the killing, and because he is such an unlikely and attractive suspect. He seems for all intents and purposes to be a golden boy who may or may not have decided to sacrifice himself for the greater good. A difficult figure to vilify – but that hasn’t stopped the mainstream media from trying.
A rumour started in early March that Luigi had filmed and starred in up to 20 “cinema-style” porn videos. This was swiftly shot down by KFA: “Hopefully everyone realizes these are fake and not Luigi.” I don’t think many people actually believed it, and even if it were true, it hardly has any bearing on his case. Either way, as this TikTok primer on media literacy explains, the damage was done. Luigi was being compared to the character Patrick Bateman from America Psycho; the subconscious programming was at work. And it was yet another ludicrous distraction in a very serious ongoing legal battle.
There have been to date four documentaries made about Luigi, one of which was produced and launched within days of his arrest. Another, as mentioned earlier, revealed evidence to the public before it was handed over to his lawyers.
All of this media coverage is tainting the potential jury pool for when this case actually goes to trial, which is what KFA has been saying since December: “there's a wealth of case law guaranteeing his right to a fair trial, but none of the safeguards have been put in place”.
Anyone who has attempted to post about Luigi online will be aware of the intense censorship happening, too. Creators have had their content taken down for “inciting violence”, just by mentioning his name, and comments saying “Free Luigi” have been getting automatically banned.
All this for someone who is accused of a murder. Not convicted, not found guilty; the case hasn’t even gone to trial yet. It’s a freak show, and at the centre of it all is a man whose life is on the line.
A class traitor / A man of the people
Luigi, being a rich straight white male, was poised to become a Brian Thompson himself in the future. It is shocking for us to see someone who has all the privileges the world can bestow, being treated like someone who doesn't.
Whether Luigi actually did it or not doesn’t seem to be relevant to the powers that be. Law enforcement needed a scapegoat, quick, to maintain their public image. The rich and powerful want an example made of him. The blatantly unfair treatment and the smear campaigns are less about Luigi himself and more a message to the people. But it is making a martyr of Luigi – a dangerous game to play.
I mentioned at the start of this piece that Luigi and his supporters are the worst fears of the elite, embodied. That is why there have been so many efforts to discredit both Luigi and those who support him. We do not expend energy on attempting to suppress and discredit those who pose no threat. The more violations they throw his way, the more they show their own asses. They are scared.
But each transgression only serves to whip up more support for Luigi. He has been inundated with letters. He’s inspired protests, artwork, music, and, well, people like me, writing about his case from the other side of the globe. One only needs to have a quick scroll through the donor messages on his GiveSendGo fundraiser to see how firmly the people have taken his side. I have seen notes from people donating all their week’s tips, dropping in for regular donations, pouring in all they can afford; a flood of gestures big and small.
The messages are heartfelt, humorous, sad, ironic, indignant… They come from all kinds of people, not all of whom are in agreement about Luigi’s innocence. But they reflect the desperation and indignity that ordinary Americans suffer under their healthcare system, the love and admiration that Luigi has inspired, and the people’s demand for fairness and justice.
Sometimes, the fund total jumps up when a wealthier donor drops thousands, with the largest donation at the time of writing being $36,500. At present, the fund is at over $900k, inching toward the goal of $1 million by 6 May.
Whether Luigi is innocent or guilty has already been decided in the minds of many, but the trials have yet to begin. It will likely be a lengthy process, and the world is watching with interest.
In the meantime, Luigi has practically been canonised as a living saint amongst his supporters. And their devotion, no matter the underhanded tactics deployed by his opponents, looks unlikely to diminish.
Author’s note
This article is not a complete coverage of Luigi’s cases. There are many, many details that I have not been able to include. I encourage you to read the linked documents and Luigi’s lawyers’ official website for more info. My intention was to give a broad overview with a focus, of course, on how Luigi is being prejudiced.
I’ve exhausted myself writing this piece. I never imagined that one day I’d be trawling through American court documents and Daily Mail (yuck) articles to write about a murder suspect, but you never know where life takes you!
If you like my work, I’d love your support.
Thanks so much for reading!