Luigi Mangione attends a pre-trial appearance at Manhattan Criminal Court on Aug. 11.
REUTERS/David Dee Delgado/Pool
The Manhattan judge overseeing Luigi Mangione’s state murder trial postponed the proceedings from September to Dec. 10 after Mangione’s lawyers sought to dismiss his murder and weapons charges on Friday.
Mangione admitted last week that he shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Midtown street in 2024 in pleading guilty to two federal charges of stalking that resulted in Thompson’s death.
Within hours of his plea, Mangione’s attorneys, led by Karen Freidman Agnifilo, filed a motion to dismiss the murder and weapons possession counts in Mangione’s state case in a filing arguing that it amounted to double jeopardy — the legal rule that stops the government from trying a person twice for the same crime.
In considering that motion, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro gave the District Attorney’s Office until the end of October to reply.
“Before the District Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice vied for prosecutorial supremacy, they acted in concert and coordination with each other to ensure that both offices would prosecute Mr. Mangione for a single criminal episode, allowing them to each punish him separately for the same event,” Agnifilo wrote in the motion seeking to dismiss all but one of the charges against Mangione in the federal case.
Mangione’s argument is that he has now pled guilty to the act of shooting Thompson, it would be a constitutional violation under the Fifth Amendment for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to try him for the same incident. Agnifilo wrote that federal and state prosecutors worked in coordination on their parallel cases in order “to maximize his punishment and increase each government’s chances to convict him.”
Specifically Agnifilo is relying on New York’s double jeopardy law, which legal experts have noted is broader and offers more protections than federal law, and bars a person from being prosecuted twice “based upon the same act or criminal transaction.”
In Friday’s motion, Agnifilo expanded Mangione’s argument that not only are the parallel cases double jeopardy but they’re also a violation of his due process right to “fully and fairly pursue an affirmative defense.”
Agnifilo wrote that Mangione’s back-to-back meant that defending himself in the state case would have reduced his ability to negate an affirmative defense — a legal strategy that could introduce new exonerating evidence.
The only remaining count separate from Thompson’s killing in the state case concerns Mangione’s possession of a fake ID card when he was arrested in Pennsylvania.
In response to Agnifilo’s motion, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office referred amNewYork Law to its statement in response to his plea on Friday that DA Alvin Bragg “remains committed to seeking justice for Mr. Thompson and his family.”