{"id":271449,"date":"2026-06-18T23:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T23:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/271449\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T23:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T23:34:14","slug":"luigi-mangione-bizarrely-withdraws-extreme-emotional-disturbance-defense-claim-1-day-after-filing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/271449\/","title":{"rendered":"Luigi Mangione bizarrely withdraws ‘extreme emotional disturbance’ defense claim 1 day after filing it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luigi Mangione has\u00a0apparently\u00a0abruptly scrapped the psychiatric defense he planned to use at his\u00a0upcoming trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defense respectfully withdraws CPL 250.10 notice at this time,\u201d the accused killer\u2019s lawyers wrote to Judge Gregory Carro in Manhattan Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The letter \u2014 which\u00a0refers\u00a0to the specific part of New York\u2019s criminal code\u00a0\u2014\u00a0could mean that\u00a0Mangione no longer plans to claim\u00a0he was overtaken by an \u201cextreme emotional disturbance\u201d when he\u00a0gunned down Thompson on a Midtown sidewalk in December 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"LuigiLuigi Mangione has abruptly scrapped the psychiatric defense he planned to use at his upcoming trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. AP Photo\/Angelina Katsanis<\/p>\n

But one experienced Big Apple defense attorney said Mangione\u00a0could still use the\u00a0eyebrow-raising tactic\u00a0\u2014 just without providing any medical evidence that he has mental health issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are still perfectly free to pursue the defense of extreme emotional disturbance,\u201d defense lawyer Ron Kuby told The Post Thursday.<\/p>\n

Now, Mangione\u2019s lawyers \u201ccannot call any mental health experts to testify about his mental health,\u201d are barred from showing jurors \u201cany psychiatric or mental health records,\u201d and \u201ccannot introduce any evidence that talks about him having any psychiatric malady,\u201d Kuby added.<\/p>\n

If the psychiatric defense is still used in some form\u00a0\u2014 and if jurors buy it\u00a0\u2014 the\u00a0legal gambit would knock\u00a0the charge down to manslaughter instead of murder, carrying less prison time.<\/p>\n

\"BrianUnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (above) was allegedly shot by Mangione outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan in December 2024. UnitedHealth Group<\/p>\n

Mangione\u2019s sudden strategy shift came just one day after the judge revealed that the accused assassin\u2019s lawyers planned to use the mental health defense at his upcoming Sept. 8. state trial.<\/p>\n

Judge Carro had also ordered Mangione\u2019s lawyers to turn over their medical records describing any \u201cmalady\u201d that Mangione purportedly suffered from by the end of Thursday. One possible reason for the \u201cnotice\u201d withdrawal could be for Mangione\u2019s attorneys to avoid divulging that information, Kuby said.<\/p>\n

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A spokeswoman\u00a0for\u00a0Mangione\u2019s legal team\u00a0declined to provide more context on the one-sentence\u00a0letter sent to the court\u00a0Thursday night.<\/p>\n

Legal experts polled by the Post Wednesday were split on whether the ploy\u00a0would work,\u00a0but agreed that it could be Mangione\u2019s best option given the mountain of physical evidence tying him to Thompson\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n

Heather Cucolo, a criminal law professor at New York Law School, said a jury\u00a0\u201cis going to have a difficult time with this\u201d because of evidence that Mangione meticulously planned the execution, including by lying in wait outside Thompson\u2019s hotel in Midtown before the broad daylight shooting.<\/p>\n

But Kuby had\u00a0called the psych strategy \u201csort of the perfect defense\u201d because it would allow Mangione\u2019s lawyers to highlight the\u00a0healthcare system\u2019s perils\u00a0as they probed Mangione\u2019s\u00a0hatred of Thompson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luigi Mangione has\u00a0apparently\u00a0abruptly scrapped the psychiatric defense he planned to use at his\u00a0upcoming trial in the killing of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[419,6974,57,238,9,11,10,31802,4721,58],"class_list":["post-271449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-courts","tag-luigi-mangione","tag-metro","tag-murders","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-psychology","tag-trials","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271449","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=271449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}