New York
—
Luigi Mangione is due back in federal court Friday, where his attorneys will continue to fight for the 27-year-old accused killer to avoid the death penalty in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s top executive in 2024.
Mangione allegedly shot Brian Thompson, 50, on a busy Manhattan sidewalk outside a hotel where he was set to attend an annual investors conference December 4, 2024. His arrest five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, ended a multi-state manhunt.
The case generated a national debate over the American health care system that’s garnered appalled reactions to Thompson’s brutal killing but also vocal support for Mangione as he’s become a figure for larger frustrations with the industry. Donations to his legal fund surpassed $1.4 million.
On Friday, a federal judge is expected to hear arguments over a defense motion to dismiss two charges from the indictment against Mangione, including a murder charge that carries the death penalty.
Mangione’s defense team says the judge should toss one count of murder through the use of a firearm and a firearms charge over a technical legal interpretation of statutes.
The murder charge that carries the death penalty is predicated on being carried out through a violent crime that must also be charged in the indictment. The defense, however, says the two stalking charges that round out Mangione’s indictment are not violent crimes.
Prosecutors allege Mangione stalked Thompson online and in person to carry out the killing.
Mangione’s lawyers – Karen Friedman Agnifilo and her husband Marc Agnifilo – have already found success capitalizing on legal nuances for Mangione. In his state case last fall, the judge dismissed two terror-related murder charges against him – the top two charges in that indictment.
The state judge found that, “There was no evidence presented of a desire to terrorize the public, inspire widespread fear, engage in a broader campaign of violence, or to conspire with organized terrorist groups,” which was required by the statutes governing those charges.
Mangione still faces second-degree murder and eight other counts in that state case and other charges in Pennsylvania related to his arrest. He’s pleaded not guilty to all charges.
It’s unclear if federal District Judge Margaret Garnett will rule on any of the outstanding defense motions at Friday’s hearing.
At a minimum, the federal judge should take the death penalty off the table over a conflict of interest with US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who announced the Justice Department would seek the death penalty last April, another defense motion says.
The motion argues Bondi should recuse herself from any decision making related to Mangione over a conflict of interest with Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm where she worked before joining the Trump administration last year. The parent company of UnitedHealthcare is a Ballard client.
The Justice Department has pushed back on the defense suggestion that Bondi continues to profit from Ballard’s ongoing representation of UnitedHealth Group and accused Mangione’s lawyers of creating such a misimpression by cherry-picking language from her public financial disclosure report.
“She disclosed that Ballard would make no further contributions to her plan upon her confirmation by the Senate and after she left that firm,” a government letter filed Wednesday says.
Bondi committed not to participate for one year after her resignation from Ballard Partners in matters involving Ballard and its clients as a party, so the criminal case against Mangione should be fair game for the DOJ head, the letter also said.
Mangione’s defense also wants key evidence tossed from his federal case, arguing items were illegally seized from his backpack during his arrest.
His lawyers have asked the judge to hold an evidentiary hearing that could unfold like the dayslong hearing held last month in Mangione’s state case, where prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office laid out details of how Mangione’s arrest unfolded.
The state court judge is expected to rule on the evidentiary issues in May.
Police did an initial search of the backpack at the McDonald’s and then later brought it to the police station, where they found a ghost gun and other items, according to testimony during the state suppression hearing.
Those law enforcement searches were illegal, according to Mangione’s attorneys, and the backpack’s contents should be inadmissible because search warrants obtained later that night were improperly based on evidence from earlier searches they say never should have happened.
Mangione’s lawyers have argued his backpack wasn’t technically in his control at the time of his arrest – a point contested by federal prosecutors – so they want that “factual dispute” examined at an evidentiary hearing.
At the McDonald’s, an officer asked Mangione to pull down his face mask and give his name. Mangione said it was “Mark Rosario” and gave the officer a New Jersey ID card with that false identity, according to testimony in state court.
Officers during the state court proceedings testified that the false identification allowed them to arrest Mangione on charges related to the fake ID and legally search his belongings, including his backpack, due to a policy known as “search incident to arrest,” they said.
Federal prosecutors oppose an evidentiary hearing and in court filings have argued the law enforcement search of Mangione’s backpack at McDonald’s was permissible because they have a right to search the belongings on a person during their arrest, and the backpack was sitting on a table feet away from Mangione.
The Altoona Police officers also had a right to search the bag for anything immediately dangerous before transporting it, federal prosecutors say.
“It would nonetheless be permissible as falling within circumstances in which there would be ‘other justifications for a warrantless search’ because the Altoona Police Department officers could have reasonably believed that the backpack may have contained ‘some immediately dangerous instrumentality.’”
