As one 26-year-old defendant slipped out of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's grasp this week, another landed squarely in it.
Daniel Penny, the former Marine who put homeless man Jordan Neely in a chokehold on a New York City subway car, walked free on Monday after he was acquitted in Neely's death. Around the same time, about 275 miles away, officials arrested Luigi Mangione, the suspect accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan last week.
Mangione is now in the process of being extradited from where he was arrested in western Pennsylvania to Manhattan, where the assassination took place on the morning of Dec. 4. That process could take weeks, but once it is completed his case will land squarely on the lap of Bragg's office.
All of this comes just seven months after that office put on one of the biggest trials in American history: the hush money case against now President-elect Donald Trump that ended in his conviction on 34 felony counts.
These days, it seems Bragg can't catch a break on these high-profile cases. Or depending on your level of cynicism about the role of a big city DA up for reelection next year, perhaps he can't stop catching breaks.
"The role of an elected district attorney is not for the faint of heart or the thin-skinned," former federal prosecutor and elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek. "The size and diversity of Manhattan translates to an ever-changing caseload for the local prosecutor's office, from routine misdemeanors to the most serious and complex crimes."
Even before he indicted Trump, Bragg had overseen a number of cases that brought with them national attention, including the fraud case against The Trump Organization, the fraud case against Steve Bannon and his "We Build the Wall" fundraising group and the reopened investigation into the death of Eric Garner, a Black man who died in 2014 after a police officer put him in a chokehold during an arrest.
"The prospective murder case against Luigi Mangione for the assassination of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is another violent act that has attracted the attention of the country," McAuliffe said.
The investigation into Mangione and the assassination of Thompson remains ongoing, yet immediately following the shooting, the suspect received an outpouring of support from Americans across the political spectrum who viewed the cold-blooded execution as a watershed moment for the nation's healthcare industry and the insurance companies that seem to run it.
It's not entirely surprising that Bragg's caseload has included cases that have spurred national conversation. District attorneys of any major U.S. city face tough decisions over who to prosecute. Nathan Hochman, who took office as Los Angeles' district attorney last week, will have to make a decision on the infamous Menendez brothers case his first month on the job.
"High profile cases come with the territory," former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek.
But there's one key factor that differentiates the United Healthcare shooting case from Penny's case and Trump's hush money case, Rahmani said.
"Trump and Penny arguably shouldn't have been filed at all," the former prosecutor said. "Mangione has to be prosecuted, and although he has received more sympathy than other murderers, he doesn't have much of a chance to acquittal absent jury nullification. He may even take a plea."
But McAuliffe countered, "Whether another DA would have brought the case is not the point; Bragg was, and is, the one elected to make those charging decisions."
Sympathies for Mangione could dissipate over time, especially by the time that the specifics of the murder are being recounted in court, but emotions remain the biggest challenge for Bragg's team, legal analyst Glenn Kirschner told Newsweek.
Kirschner said while Mangione's case is more "clearcut on the facts and the law," it's "less clearcut on the emotions."
"We living in a time of the rise of the American oligarchy. I don't think there's any disputing that and so, I think that conjures up all kinds of feelings and emotions in people," he said.
"The biggest challenge for Bragg's team will be making sure they conduct a searing jury selection and as much due process as they can to make sure there's nobody on that jury who will allow their emotions to control their decision when they see the evidence."
Still, Kirschner believes its still possible to seat that prospective jury.
"The Manhattan District Attorney's office found a fair and impartial jury to try Donald Trump, who is one of the most polarizing, emotion-inducing human beings on the planet," he said. "Prosecutors can find somebody to sit fairly and impartially in the case against this young man for killing a healthcare executive."
Newsweek reached out to Bragg's office for comment on Tuesday.
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