It’s been a year since Luigi Mangione’s case has been in the spotlight, taking a new turn with each development. The recent developments on the ongoing matter have been the tireless attempts made by the legal team of the convicted to steer it away from the death penalty. A recent petition filed by Luigi’s team highlights how the authorities are attempting to manipulate the case into a public spectacle driven by prejudice. This reason has been highlighted all the more now, especially after one of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent statements.
For the unversed, it was in September 2025 when a New York judge cleared Mangione’s terror-related murder charges, while he continues to face the charge of second-degree murder. On the other hand, the Federal prosecutors are all rooting for a death penalty in the accused’s federal case at the moment. Interestingly, shortly after the two significant charges against Luigi were removed, his legal team opined and filed a petition claiming that the potential jurors were likely influenced after the accused’s staged perp walk in shackles went viral.
The fact that a judge dropped 2 state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione because the evidence was legally insufficient tells you everything you need to know about this case. Keep talking about Luigi! pic.twitter.com/QKNq6opfTL
— The Luigi Case (@LuigiCaseFiles) September 17, 2025
And now, his legal team further condemned the violation of Luigi Mangione’s constitutional and statutory rights at the very basic level, arguing that Pam Bondi and NYC mayor Eric Adams have prejudiced the case totally to become a public spectacle. It further urged the court to intervene at the earliest and correct the errors made by the government, thereby stalling the possibility of the case turning towards resulting in the death penalty.
A section from the petition read “Authorities could not resist feeding into the media firestorm that surrounded the [Brian] Thompson killing, the nationwide manhunt, the NYPD leaks, and the torrent of news stories and social media posts about the predatory behavior of large, wealthy insurance companies. The politicians, prosecutors, agents, and detectives who staged the perp walk knew it would dominate the news cycle for days.”
Luigi Mangione inside the courtroom during his hearing today. pic.twitter.com/euTo38h3zG
— Luigi Archive (@Luigi_Archives) September 16, 2025
Moreover, an added reason why Mangione’s arrest and subsequent case became a matter of controversy was that his orange jumpsuit, flanked by the mayor and other armed agents, was visible everywhere. They added “And that was the agents’ objective: to recast Mangione as already guilty, already convicted, already condemned, already facing punishment—in this case, a potential death sentence-in the eyes of the public.”
In fact, Pam Bondi also faced criticism and judgment after her factually misleading, prejudicial public statements made after she formally announced that the Department of Justice would be naturally requesting a death penalty in Mangione’s case above all else.
The statement from Luigi’s legal team adds “Rather than authorizing the [New York] prosecutors to seek the death penalty in a non-public communication, the Attorney General took the unprecedented action of directing them to do so via press release, knowing that this death penalty investigation would be conducted by presenting evidence to grand jurors exposed to her press release before hearing any evidence.”
Besides this, the report also marks out specific comments made by Donald Trump himself about people, especially young women fangirling over Luigi, who was an accused. He had said, “And now… I’m watching the girls going crazy for him. This is a sickness. This really has to be studied and investigated. It’s not possible.”
