NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione‘s legal professionals urging a decide Thursday to throw out his state homicide expenses within the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing that the New York case and a parallel federal loss of life penalty prosecution quantity to double jeopardy.
If that doesn’t occur, they need terrorism expenses dismissed and prosecutors barred from utilizing proof collected throughout Mangione’s arrest final December, together with a 9 mm handgun, ammunition and a pocket book by which authorities say he described his intent to “wack” an insurance coverage govt.
Mangione’s legal professionals additionally need to exclude statements he made to law enforcement officials who took him into custody at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of New York Metropolis, after a five-day search.
Amongst different issues, prosecutors say the Ivy League graduate apologized to officers “for the inconvenience of the day,” and expressed concern for a McDonald’s worker who alerted them to his whereabouts, saying: “Lots of people will likely be upset I used to be arrested.”
Thompson’s Dec. 4 killing exterior a Manhattan resort “has led to a authorized tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors as they struggle for who controls the destiny of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione,” his legal professionals, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan wrote in a 57-page court docket submitting.
They referred to as the twin state and federal circumstances, plus a 3rd in Pennsylvania involving gun possession and different expenses, “unprecedented prosecutorial one-upmanship.” They mentioned prosecutors ”are attempting to get two bites on the apple to convict Mr. Mangione” of homicide.
“But, regardless of the gravest of penalties for Mr. Mangione, legislation enforcement has methodically and purposefully trampled his constitutional rights,” his legal professionals wrote. They allege officers questioned him with out telling him he had a proper to stay silent and searched his property with out a warrant.
The Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace mentioned it could reply in court docket papers.
The protection’s calls for to finish or restrict Mangione’s state case may preview his authorized technique for his federal homicide case, the place prosecutors intend to hunt the loss of life penalty. The state expenses carry a most punishment of life in jail.
Mangione, who turns 27 on Tuesday, has pleaded not responsible in each circumstances. He has been held in a Brooklyn federal jail since authorities whisked him to New York by aircraft and helicopter after his arrest.
Mangione is due again in court docket for the state case on June 26, when Decide Gregory Carro is predicted to rule on the dismissal request. He subsequent federal court docket date is Dec. 5, a day after the one-year anniversary of Thompson’s loss of life. No trial date has been set in both case.
Prosecutors had mentioned they anticipated the state case go to trial first, however Friedman Agnifilo mentioned final week that she needs the federal case to take priority as a result of it includes the loss of life penalty.
Together with searching for to dismiss the state case, Mangione’s legal professionals alternatively requested Carro to throw out expenses alleging he killed “in furtherance of terrorism” and as an act of terrorism. They argue there are “completely no details to assist this idea” and that charging him below a post-9/11 terrorism statute flouts the intent of lawmakers.
Surveillance video confirmed a masked gunman capturing Thompson from behind as the manager arrived for UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor convention. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” had been scrawled on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase generally used to explain how insurers keep away from paying claims.
Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg has mentioned that the ambush “was a killing that was meant to evoke terror.”
Mangione’s federal expenses embody homicide by way of use of a firearm, which carries the opportunity of the loss of life penalty, together with two counts of stalking and a firearms offense.
Final month, U.S. Lawyer Common Pam Bondi introduced that she was directing Manhattan federal prosecutors to hunt the loss of life penalty for the killing, calling it “an act of political violence” and a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”
The killing and ensuing search resulting in Mangione’s arrest rattled the enterprise group whereas galvanizing medical insurance critics who rallied round Mangione as a stand-in for frustrations over protection denials and hefty payments.
Of their submitting Thursday, Mangione’s legal professionals argued that the conflicting theories of the state and federal circumstances – meaning to “intimidate or coerce a civilian inhabitants vs. stalking a single particular person” – has created a “authorized quagmire” that makes it “legally and logistically inconceivable to defend towards them concurrently.”
“This example is so constitutionally fraught that we’re exhausting pressed to seek out precedent for such an unprecedented state of affairs,” Mangione’s legal professionals wrote.
