BARD - Luigi Mangione’s Guilty Plea and the Double Jeopardy Fight Ahead

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Reasonable Doubt, with your hosts, Mark Geragos and Gary Smith.

**Mark Geragos** (0:10)
Dog Days of Summer, August. Somebody was asking me yesterday what the dog days of summer mean, and my quickest response was when it's hot. And I always think of dog days of summer as kind of a faded patina of the outside during the day.

**Gary Smith** (0:31)
Yeah, I agree. And I think that we are in the dog days of summer, but I think that Angelino's and Southern Californians in general seem to forget every single year that the dog days of summer stretch from sometime around the 4th of July towards, I don't know, I mean, maybe I'm overstating it a bit, but Halloween. I mean, it lasts a lot longer than everyone thinks. It seems like everyone resets somewhere around March and thinks that summer is going to end in August and it does not.

**Mark Geragos** (0:57)
Yeah, it's exactly right. Some of these days are incredible. We had, we've had quite a week. I think the, my obvious reflexive topic is Luigi, because we're on, what are we, as we're dropped this, we're a day and a half, two days almost, from the, the change of plea, which if you're following the case, Luigi Mangione was being prosecuted both federally and state. And on the eve of the state trial, which was set to begin in a couple of weeks and they went over to federal court, worked out a deal where they pled to the indictment.

**Gary Smith** (1:49)
Well, help me here. Did they work out a deal or did they just plea?

**Mark Geragos** (1:53)
Right, they really didn't work out a deal, which you're so sharp, because there's been a lot of speculation that this was the DOJ's way to stick it to Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted President Trump.
If they had entered into a plea agreement, you might have a pretty good argument on that, that how did the DOJ do this? The reason is, obviously, the people are surmising that's what happened, is because they're simultaneous with the entering of the plea, and Luigi giving a very expansive factual basis for the plea, as you have to do when you're in federal court when you plead. That expansive basis, because he's not charged with murder in federal court, but he did admit to the murder in federal court. The argument is that they knew that they needed to do that in order to then simultaneously or contemporaneously file the double jeopardy motion in state court, which they did. They already filed it on Friday.

**Gary Smith** (3:07)
Yeah, they filed it while he was, I mean, maybe I have my timeline off by 20 minutes or so here, but it seems like while he was giving his admission and entering into his plea, they filed the paperwork on the state case, trying to raise it up to double jeopardy question there, right?

**Mark Geragos** (3:25)
Yeah, exactly. And so now that will be teed up. The responses by the prosecutor, the lead prosecutor, and they unsealed the letter, maybe post-production you can insert it if you can find it. There's a letter that the Manhattan DA apparently filed under seal that was dated July 2nd. And in that letter, I understand why they filed it under seal, there was, they said based on, I think he said based on public reporting, that there have been talks about a plea agreement and they wanted to alert, I don't know who they, when you file it under seal, I don't know who you're trying, based on published reports, I don't know who you're trying to alert. But the fact is they were worried about this very scenario and obviously they, that has come to pass less than six weeks later. And now the question is, and for those who, if you want to get really into the weeds, this was brought almost simultaneously, the federal prosecution and the state prosecution.
The people, look at you, Gary, there it is. July 2nd letter, you want to pull it up as to where they specifically, yeah, the district court's adjournment of the federal trial date to avoid interfering with this court's trial schedule continues to reflect the people, meaning the state's primary jurisdiction. And then they go in and talk about all of that. On the second page in the first full paragraph, the people are aware of public reporting regarding the possibility of a guilty plea.
If that were to operate to defeat the outcome in the state, the people could advise the district court of that consequence, and the court should consider that whether to accept the plea. So, Gary, who did they address it to on the top?