Judge postpones state proceedings to December 10
Manhattan prosecutors on Friday filed court papers opposing Luigi Mangione’s arguments for dismissing his state-level murder case in the December 4, 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, setting up a legal fight over whether the same killing can be tried twice — first in federal court and then by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
The prosecutors urged state Judge Gregory Carro to reject Mangione’s motion to dismiss. They argued the state murder case can proceed “under an exception” to New York’s double jeopardy law, saying the federal stalking charges Mangione pleaded guilty to on August 14 are “dramatically different” from the state murder charge and that the two sets of charges do not overlap in a way that triggers double jeopardy protections.
New York state law holds 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,” according to the statute the prosecutors cited in their filing. They wrote that “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.”
Mangione’s defense had argued that the state double jeopardy law bars the Manhattan district attorney’s office from bringing the murder case after his federal plea in the same killing. His lawyers have also pressed for dismissal of state weapons charges, arguing they cannot be pursued because Mangione had previously faced federal weapons counts. The prosecutors countered that the federal court had dismissed those counts, undercutting the defense’s argument on that point.
The October 9 filing met a deadline Carro had set in a 17 August letter for prosecutors to respond to Mangione’s push for dismissal. The judge postponed state proceedings and scheduled the next court date for December 10; Mangione’s defense has until October 30 to reply to the prosecution’s papers. Mangione had been scheduled for a September 8 New York state murder and weapons trial before Carro postponed the case.
Mangione pleaded guilty to two federal stalking charges on August 14, weeks before the scheduled September trial date in state court. The killing of Thompson outside a Midtown hotel on December 4, 2024 triggered an intense manhunt and an outpouring of public anger at the practices of the for-profit US healthcare industry.