Luigi Mangione’s lawyers filed paperwork on Friday once again pushing for dismissal of his state-level case in the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson following his federal guilty plea.
Mangione pleaded guilty on ۱۴ August to federal charges in Thompson’s grisly death outside a Manhattan hotel on ۴ December ۲۰۲۴. The shocking plea came less than a month before his state murder and weapons trial, which had been scheduled for ۸ September.
Thompson’s death spurred a sprawling search for his killer. The incident simultaneously elicited an onslaught of anger against the for-profit US healthcare industry, which has long been decried for putting their bottom line ahead of patients, to the latter’s detriment.
About an hour after Mangione admitted to two federal stalking charges, his lawyers filed paperwork to dismiss his state case. They have contended that New York state’s double jeopardy laws bar him from being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney.
Double-jeopardy protection under the US constitution does not bar state prosecution for the same crimes as a federal case, and vice-versa. However, New York state statute maintains that “a person may not be twice prosecuted for the same offense” and “a person may not be separately prosecuted for two offenses based upon the same act or criminal transaction”.
In their new filing, Mangione’s lawyers reiterated their double-jeopardy arguments.
“The core misconduct of the federal and state prosecutions is the same: the intent to kill and the killing of Brian Thompson. Yes, stalking can also, in some circumstances, apply to conduct different and less extreme than intending to kill someone. But this has nothing to do with whether it also applies to intentional killing,” they wrote.
“One of the harms clearly addressed by the expansive federal stalking statute is stalking with the intent to kill and resulting in the killing of the person stalked,” they also said. “It is a statute that, like a state murder statute, is intended to keep people safe from being murdered—the oldest crime there is. That the stalking statute also criminalizes stalking conduct that does not result in death does not change that analysis.”
Manhattan prosecutors oppose Mangione’s push for dismissal. In paperwork filed on ۹ October, they insisted his state proceedings can proceed “under an exception” of this state’s double-jeopardy provisions.
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They have argued that federal stalking crimes, and state murder offenses, do not overlap in such a manner that state double-jeopardy protections would come into play.
“Statutory double jeopardy applies only when a defendant has been ‘separately prosecuted’ for the same misconduct, and dismissed federal charges do not constitute a separate prosecution,” they said.
The judge presiding over Mangione’s state case, Gregory Carro, pushed back these proceedings after the unexpected plea. Carro calendared the next court date for ۱۰ December.
