Luigi Mangione's defence invokes double jeopardy to block New York murder trial
Mangione's lawyers argue his federal guilty plea bars a state murder trial over the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Double jeopardy claim filed in Mangione state murder case
Attorneys for Luigi Mangione have filed a court motion arguing that a state murder trial in New York would constitute double jeopardy, abc7chicago.com reports. The filing, submitted Friday, follows Mangione's August guilty plea to federal stalking charges stemming from the 2024 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the Midtown Hilton in New York.
In that federal plea, Mangione admitted to travelling to New York with the intent to kill Thompson and shooting him at the scene. His defence team now contends that prosecution amounts to sufficient legal accountability for the killing, and that proceeding with a separate state murder charge would violate constitutional protections against being tried twice for the same conduct.
"There are no cases where the identical conduct — the same victim, the same gun, the same actions by the defendant, the same place and the same time — that was prosecuted by federal authorities was then also prosecuted by state authorities," defence attorney Karen Agnifilo wrote in the filing.
Agnifilo had previously told reporters that New York law "does not permit a person to be prosecuted and punished twice for the exact same crime under a statute that governs successive prosecutions."
The Manhattan District Attorney's office is resisting the motion, arguing that the federal stalking charge and the state murder charge address fundamentally different types of misconduct. The defence countered in Friday's filing that the "core misconduct" is effectively identical in both cases.
"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," the filing stated.
The Manhattan DA's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced on the federal charges in December. That same month, Judge Gregory Carro is set to hear oral arguments on the defence motion to dismiss the state murder indictment.
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