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US District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed murder and weapons charges against Luigi Mangione<\/a> on January 30, 2025. NEW YORK, Jan 30 (Reuters) \u2013 Luigi Mangione will not face the death penalty<\/a> after a U.S. judge on Friday dismissed murder and weapons charges against the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO<\/a> Brian Thompson, in a major blow to federal prosecutors<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett in Manhattan said she felt constrained by Supreme Court precedents to dismiss the murder charges, saying they were legally \u201cincompatible\u201d with the two stalking charges Mangione still faces.\u00a0He still faces possible life in prison if convicted.<\/p>\n Mangione, 27, had pleaded not guilty to all charges stemming from Thompson\u2019s death in December 2024, and has been jailed since his arrest.\n<\/p>\n While public officials widely condemned the killing, Mangione became a folk hero of sorts to many Americans who decry high costs for medical care and health insurer practices.\n<\/p>\n Mangione has pleaded not guilty to separate murder, weapons and forgery charges in a New York state court in Manhattan. No trial date\u00a0has been set. Garnett had scheduled jury selection in the federal case to begin in September.<\/p>\n In a 39-page decision, Garnett said federal prosecutors could pursue their\u00a0murder and weapons charges only if the stalking charges qualified as \u201ccrimes of violence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n She said the charges did not qualify because any use of force could be achieved through \u201creckless,\u201d as opposed to intentional, conduct.\n<\/p>\n The judge said prosecutors and Mangione agreed that this fell short of the kind of \u201cforce\u201d the Supreme Court required to make out a crime of violence.\n<\/p>\n Garnett acknowledged the \u201capparent absurdity\u201d of the legal landscape, saying no one would seriously question that Mangione\u2019s alleged conduct \u2014 crossing state lines to kill a specific healthcare executive with a handgun equipped with a silencer \u2014 was violent criminal conduct.\n<\/p>\n She said her analysis may strike ordinary people, and many lawyers and judges, as \u201ctortured and strange,\u201d but it \u201crepresents the court\u2019s committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case. The law must be the court\u2019s only concern.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Summary: US District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed murder and weapons charges against Luigi Mangione…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[23519,24536,6974,75,84,83,3614,9,24,63,52722,22563],"class_list":{"0":"post-120023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-death-penalty","9":"tag-federal-prosecutors","10":"tag-luigi-mangione","11":"tag-manhattan","12":"tag-manhattan-headlines","13":"tag-manhattan-news","14":"tag-murder-charge","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-stalking-charges","19":"tag-unitedhealthcare-ceo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMangione still faces two stalking charges<\/a> and possible life imprisonment if convicted.
\nThe dismissal was based on Supreme Court precedents regarding the legal definition of crimes of violence.<\/p>\n