Why Luigi Mangione’s Murder Trial Will Have an Anonymous Jury

Luigi Mangione's jury isn't going to have names attached to it. Manhattan Judge Gregory Carro ruled on August 11, 2026, that the jury in his state murder trial will stay anonymous, citing what he calls a “realistic and substantial risk” that jurors could be harassed, intimidated or improperly influenced once seated. Jury selection was set for September 8, but the trial has since been postponed indefinitely amid a fight over whether the state case can proceed due to Mangione's guilty plea in his federal case.

Mangione is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel on December 4, 2024. He's facing nine counts in his state case—second-degree murder, several weapon possession charges and criminal possession of a forged instrument—after Carro tossed two terrorism-related murder counts in 2025.

In an August 10 letter to Judge Carro, Assistant District attorney Joel Seidemann argued that the media attention surrounding the case and the actions of some Mangione supporters could place “extraordinary pressure” on witnesses and potential jurors. Mangione's defense team pushed back in filings, arguing anonymity could wrongly suggest to jurors that Mangione himself was a threat to them, and that his online supporters “have no affiliation with Mr. Mangione whatsoever and do not act on his behalf.”

Under the ruling, jurors' names and addresses stay hidden from the public and the press, though prosecutors and defense lawyers will still have access to that information—a standard split for anonymous juries, in which members typically go by number instead of name for the length of the trial. But the state case got a lot murkier just three days later. On August 14, Mangione pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of interstate stalking, admitting, “I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan.”

His attorneys have since moved to dismiss the state prosecution, arguing New York's double jeopardy law bars prosecutors from trying him for crimes already accounted for in his federal guilty plea. Manhattan prosecutors said they intended to proceed with the state case as scheduled, but Carro canceled the September 8 trial date, giving prosecutors until October 9 to respond to the dismissal motion and setting a December 10 hearing where he'll rule on whether double jeopardy bars the case from going forward.

Legal historians point to United States v. Barnes, the 1977 federal racketeering trial of Harlem heroin distributor Leroy Barnes in Manhattan, as a landmark in the history of modern anonymous juries. There was no direct threat against any juror, but prosecutors pointed to an anonymous threat against a witness and the "sordid history" of violence in multi-defendant narcotics cases, and the judge withheld jurors' names, addresses and ethnic backgrounds. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in 1979, finding no violation of Barnes' due process rights. That ruling became the template nearly every anonymous jury case has followed since.

During the following years, anonymous juries mostly showed up in New York's federal courts for high-profile organized crime and drugs cases. The 2nd Circuit sharpened the rules in United States v. Thomas in 1985 and United States v. Vario in 1991. Thomas established what's now called a two-part test: A judge needs a strong reason to believe the jury actually needs protection—from interference, harm or someone trying to mess with how it functions—and has to take reasonable steps to keep the anonymity itself from prejudicing the defendant, like telling jurors the precaution is routine, not a sign of guilt.

In United States v. Ross, decided in 1994, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals spelled out the factors judges usually weigh: ties to organized crime or a group capable of harming jurors, past attempts to interfere with the judicial process, the odds of a long sentence or steep fine and whether pretrial publicity is bad enough that jurors could get outed and harassed. That last factor is what Manhattan prosecutors leaned on hardest in the Mangione case, pointing to supporters they said had talked about contacting prospective jurors about their legal rights.

Anonymous juries used to pertain to organize-crime-related cases almost exclusively. Cocaine trafficker Rayful Edmond's 1989 trial in Washington, D.C.—the city's first time implementing anonymous juries—happened in a courtroom fitted with bulletproof glass.

Mob boss John Gotti's 1987 federal racketeering trial also used an anonymous jury, though it didn't stop juror George Pape from taking a bribe and helping Gotti walk. Drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's federal trial in Brooklyn, which ran from late 2018 into early 2019, had a jury that was anonymous and partially sequestered, with armed U.S. marshals escorting jurors to and from the courthouse. Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking trial in Manhattan also featured an anonymous jury.

There's no single federal rule that requires or standardizes anonymous juries; it's left to individual trial judges, guided by circuit court precedent, constitutional principles and their inherent authority. That means the same facts can play out differently depending on where a case lands.

Jane Kirtley, a media law scholar, wrote in the American Bar Association's Litigation Journal that the practice chips away at public confidence in the courts, writing, “It is hard for the public to trust the institutions of justice when those institutions do not trust the public with the information necessary to evaluate their performance.”

Jayne Ressler, a Brooklyn Law School professor, has argued that anonymity should become the default in most trials rather than a rare exception, pointing to the privacy risks social media poses to any juror—not just those facing an identifiable threat. Whether that reasoning extends to a case as high-profile as Mangione's remains an open question.