Jury selection in the federal trial is scheduled to begin on 8 September with opening statements due to start on 13 October. <\/p>\n
But state prosecutors are seeking to try Mangione as soon as July.<\/p>\n
In her ruling, Judge Garnett, a Biden appointee, said two of the four federal charges did not “meet the federal statutory definition of a ‘crime of violence’ as matter of law”. <\/p>\n
She noted that her decision was “solely to foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury”.<\/p>\n
Garnett’s ruling was a setback for the justice department, which had called Thompson’s murder a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination”.<\/p>\n
The judge has given the government 30 days to challenge her decision to rule out the death penalty in the Mangione case.<\/p>\n
In a win for prosecutors, Garnett said they could present evidence to the jury from Mangione’s backpack that he was wearing at the time of his arrest at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Among the items in the bag were a gun, fake IDs and a notebook with writings that allegedly detailed Mangione’s grievances against the US healthcare system. <\/p>\n
Defence attorneys had sought to dismiss that evidence from trial, arguing that authorities obtained it illegally without a warrant. <\/p>\n
Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, is also facing nine charges in a separate case brought by New York state prosecutors, including second-degree murder.<\/p>\n
Garnett’s decision came as the defendant was due to appear in court for a hearing on Friday. <\/p>\n
Father-of-two Thompson, 50, was shot from behind by a masked gunman as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. <\/p>\n
This week a Minnesota man allegedly impersonated an FBI agent in an attempt to free Mangione from the Brooklyn jail where he is being held. <\/p>\n
The suspect – Mark Anderson – was carrying barbecue fork and pizza cutter, say prosecutors. He is now being held at the same facility as Mangione.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jury selection in the federal trial is scheduled to begin on 8 September with opening statements due to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-399111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}