In a development that has left the legal establishment reaching for the smelling salts, the defence team for one Alfonso ‘The Accountant’ Mangione has announced their intention to plead insanity. Yes, the very same Mangione who allegedly dispatched his business partner with the sort of clinical precision one usually reserves for a troublesome spreadsheet. The plea, we are told, will hinge on a rare psychiatric condition that makes its victim incapable of distinguishing between a hostile takeover and a murder weapon.
‘My client was not himself,’ bleated his solicitor, with a straight face that must have required industrial-grade Botox. ‘He believed he was conducting an audit.’ Ah, the old ‘auditory hallucination of a profit warning’ defence.
A classic. But the real theatre here is the tussle over the UK extradition treaty, a document so brittle it could crack under the weight of a lawyer’s sigh. The Home Office, toggling between apoplexy and paralysis, has yet to confirm whether they will fight the expected US request.
‘It’s a delicate matter of international diplomacy,’ burbled a spokesman, his voice trembling like a gin-less tonic. Quite. Because nothing says ‘delicate diplomacy’ like a suspected murderer with a passport photo that looks like a mugshot from hell.
The Americans, predictably, are already sharpening their extradition papers and muttering about ‘special relationships’. Meanwhile, Mangione sits in Belmarsh, possibly composing his memoirs on a toilet roll, secure in the knowledge that his best chance of avoiding a US supermax is convincing a jury he thought the victim was a tax demand. It’s enough to make you weep into your lunchtime pint.
Or, in my case, weep with laughter. The whole affair stinks of the absurd theatre that passes for justice in this sceptered isle. Watch this space.
Or better yet, don’t. It will only make you angry.
