Luigi Mangione’s lawyers urged a judge Thursday to dismiss his state murder charges in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, claiming that the New York case and a parallel federal death penalty prosecution constitute double jeopardy.
If that does not happen, they want terrorism charges dropped and prosecutors barred from using evidence seized during Mangione’s arrest last December, which included a 9 mm handgun, ammunition, and a notebook in which authorities claim he described his intention to “wack” an insurance executive.
Mangione’s lawyers also want to exclude statements he made to police officers who apprehended him at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of New York City, following a five-day search.
According to prosecutors, the Ivy League graduate apologized to officers “for the inconvenience of the day,” and expressed concern for a McDonald’s employee who alerted them to his whereabouts, saying, “A lot of people will be upset I was arrested.”
Thompson’s killing outside a Manhattan hotel on December 4 “has led to a legal tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors as they fight for who controls the fate of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione,” his lawyers, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo, and Jacob Kaplan, wrote in a 57-page court filing.
They described the dual state and federal cases, along with a third in Pennsylvania involving gun possession and other charges, as “unprecedented prosecutorial one-upmanship.” According to them, prosecutors “are trying to get two bites at the apple to convict Mr. Mangione” of murder.
“Yet, despite the gravest of consequences for Mr. Mangione, law enforcement has methodically and purposefully trampled his constitutional rights,” his legal team wrote. They claim officers questioned him without informing him he had the right to remain silent and searched his property without a warrant.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office stated that it would respond in court documents.
The defense’s demands to end or limit Mangione’s state case may foreshadow his legal strategy in his federal murder case, in which prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty. State charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Mangione, who turns 27 on Tuesday, has pleaded not guilty to both charges. He has been held in a Brooklyn federal jail since his arrest, when authorities transported him to New York by plane and helicopter.
Mangione is scheduled to return to court for the state case on June 26, when Judge Gregory Carro is expected to rule on his dismissal request. Thompson’s next federal court date is December 5, a day after the one-year anniversary of his death. There has been no trial date set in either case.
Prosecutors had said the state case would go to trial first, but Friedman Agnifilo stated last week that the federal case should take precedence because it involves the death penalty.
Along with seeking to dismiss the state case, Mangione’s attorneys also asked Carro to dismiss charges that he killed “in furtherance of terrorism” and as an act of terrorism. They argue that there are “absolutely no facts to support this theory” and that charging him under a post-9/11 terrorism statute contradicts the intent of lawmakers.
Surveillance video captured a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind as he arrived for UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor conference. Police say the ammunition had the words “delay,” “deny,” and “depose” scrawled on it, which is a common phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
According to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the ambush “was a killing that was intended to evoke terror.”
Mangione faces federal charges of murder with a firearm, which could result in the death penalty, as well as two counts of stalking and a firearms offense.
Last month, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she would direct Manhattan federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the killing, describing it as “an act of political violence” and a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”
The killing and subsequent search that led to Mangione’s arrest shook the business community while galvanizing health insurance critics, who rallied around Mangione as a symbol of dissatisfaction with coverage denials and high bills.
Mangione’s attorneys argued in their filing on Thursday that the conflicting theories of the state and federal cases — intending to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” vs. stalking a single person — have created a “legal quagmire” that makes it “legally and logistically impossible to defend against them simultaneously.”
“This situation is so constitutionally fraught that we are hard pressed to find precedent for such an unprecedented situation,” according to Mangione’s lawyers.
