He was at my house watching Lord of the Rings at the time, so I don't see how he could have fucking done it.

He was hanging out with me at the time of the killing. He couldn’t have done it.

eh... that depends on how hard the state and federal prosecution/courts are gonna finger-bang him.

which is probably a lot

seems like his lawyers triad to bluff the prosecutors with a new defense strategy, and they didn't get any traction in pretrial motions, so they've dumped it.

this guy's getting railroaded. no blame on the defense for testing out some ideas...

Agreed, they already got a miracle ruling that the backpack evidence found cannot be used.

There's no way the jurors won't be compromised. On the off chance they can't bribe all 12 they can certainly threaten them. There's no way this kid is ever going to get a fair trial.

This is exactly what it was. They know theyll never get a jury to convict so their best option to to try and scare him into some kind of deal. He needs new lawyers.

Take a look at the comments on the article site. The prosecution won't have as hard a time as you might think.

A psychiatric defense is an affirmative defense. There's lots of affirmative defenses for different reasons, but the main point of an affirmative defense is that you're saying you did do it, but aren't guilty because of X. Its essentially pleading guilty. The prosecutors job is then not to prove you did it, but that you aren't crazy/acting in self defense/were entrapped, etc. The prosecutor was probably sitting happy not doing much thinking it'll be an easy case to prove the person was of sound mind. Now they have to go back to rebuilding the case from the evidence that was legally submitted. Prove where he was at what time for weeks leading up to it, where he got everything, where he went after and how. It's a shit load of work.

But Luigi was at my buddies house in Utah when it happened so there's no way he could have done it. They need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he wasn't there.

Hoping the same thing. But at the moment it seems sloppy and amateurish

There's two basic strategies they could pursue.

One is to argue that there is not enough evidence to prove Luigi killed the guy, by poking holes in the evidence collection process and getting lots of the evidence thrown out due to sloppy police work.

The other is to admit that Luigi killed the guy, but try to argue that he was out of his mind and is not in fact a stone cold killer. If the jury accepts this defense then it reduces the maximum penalty by changing the charge from murder to manslaughter.

It had always appeared that the first strategy would be used. However the leak yesterday was that the second strategy would be used.

If they are not using the Insanity strategy, and then it was really really really really really really bad to leak that they might be using it. Because if you are trying to argue that he didn't do it, or that there isn't enough evidence that he did, it doesn't look good to have previously discussed arguing why he did it.

Yeah… this seems like abundant justification for tossing his legal team. One of the following is true:

• they advised him very poorly, and then he (or they) realized how harmful that would be to his argument, but for some reason leaked their strategy before that realization
• they didn’t consult with him, but for some reason leaked their strategy
• somebody vibe-filed a motion

The whole “leaking their strategy” is kind of damning tbh. And also a bit surprising, because I was under the impression his legal team was pretty solid.

Edit: IANAL, so idk, but would this sort of thing (your lawyer fucking up super bad) be grounds for moving for a mistrial?