Shortly after the ninth and final day of a suppression hearing for Luigi Mangione’s murder case concluded on Thursday, the defendant’s attorneys blasted prosecutors for a last-minute decision not to put a New York Police Department detective on the witness stand.
Following Thursday’s proceedings, which lasted about 15 minutes, defense attorney Karen Agnifilo told reporters that her team had originally intended to question NYPD Det. Oscar Diaz, but the prosecution decided not to put him on the stand on short notice.
The decision came after a rocky afternoon of testimony on Tuesday in which the prosecution abruptly decided to withdraw statements that Mangione made to NYPD investigators under interrogation shortly after his Dec. 9, 2024 arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He is charged with the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the New York Midtown Hilton in Manhattan.
Agnifilo alleged that prosecutions decided against having Diaz testify after Mangione’s attorneys raised questions about whether their client had been read his Miranda rights for an videotaped interrogation conducted by NYPD Det. David Leonardi and a prosecutor from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
During the hearing, Agnifilo addressed a statement that NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny made in a December 2024 press conference in which he said investigators in San Francisco had contacted Mangione’s mother, Kathleen Mangione, and “she said it was something she could see him doing.”
Agnifilo insisted that this was the “opposite” of what Luigi Mangione’s mother actually said, which is that Mangione “has not made any suicidal ideation statements and was not a risk to himself or others.”
Speaking with reporters after the proceedings, Agnifilo said that she was looking to question Diaz during Thursday’s hearing about the validity of Kenny’s statement about the defendant’s mother.
Referring to the suppression hearing, which began on Dec. 1, Agnifilo said that DA’s office turned the proceedings into a “three-week mini-trial that should have been half a day.”
When asked to comment on Agfilio’s remarks, the DA’s office referred amNY Law back to the court record. Acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro told Mangione’s defense that they could call Diaz to the stand themselves but they declined.
Mangione’s counsel will have until Jan. 29 to submit their request about what evidence they want suppressed from trial. Prosecutors will have until March 5 to reply.
Carro announced that he expects to rule on the defense’s motion to suppress key pieces of evidence in the case by May 18.
During the hearing on Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann said that moving the case quickly along to trial could help bring closure to Thompson’s family.
“In terms of the litigation here I just hope that the parties understand that it’s very important to the family of the victim here — the mother is 78 years old — to be able to know whether this is the person who shot their son,” Seidemann said.
