Luigi Mangione’s lawyers are doubling down on their double jeopardy defense in their fight to have the admitted assassin spared from New York murder charges after admitting to what they say was essentially the same crime in federal court.
Murder is the same evil as stalking with intent to kill — and then killing, they argued.
The claims came in response to Manhattan prosecutors who have asked a New York judge to reject his bid to drop his state-level charges following a federal guilty plea in which he admitted to assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two who Mangione shot in the back outside a Hilton hotel in the middle of the Big Apple.
Prosecutors have said that since Mangione was not prosecuted for federal firearms offenses, there is no double jeopardy if the state level ones remain on the table. They argued that the murder charges should still go forward because although Mangione admitted to killing Thompson, that’s not the same “harm or evil” involved in the federal stalking charges. And they argued that even though Mangione withdrew a potential “extreme emotional disturbance” defense specific to Empire State law, that doesn’t mean the federal case prevented him from using it.
Mangione’s lawyers, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan, attacked all three arguments in a reply made public over the weekend.
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First, they argued that although the federal firearms charges were dismissed, he was still “prosecuted” for them, putting him at risk of double jeopardy.
“The statutory definition of being ‘prosecuted’ for an offense does not require that the defendant plead guilty to that specific offense,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote.
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Their client pleaded guilty to two federal charges, although he’d initially faced more.
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“In other words, when Mangione pleaded guilty to the federal indictment, the criminal action in which he had been charged with possession and use of the firearm was terminated for statutory double jeopardy purposes,” they wrote.
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They also argued that stalking Thompson with intent to kill him is the same “core misconduct” as murdering him. In order to get around New York’s double jeopardy law, which is more restrictive than the U.S. Constitution, prosecutors need to show that the state charges are meant to prevent different “harms or evils” than the federal ones he already pleaded guilty to.
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“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,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote. “It is a statute that, like a state murder statute, is intended to keep people safe from being murdered — the oldest crime there is.”
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They argued that while the federal stalking charge includes other elements, including interstate travel and the use of electronic communications, they are “not related” to the core evil of the crime, which is killing someone.
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“Travel and electronics are not the evils or harms being prevented,” they wrote. “The federal government does have an interest, however, in preventing people from [traveling] or using electronics as part of the crime of killing another person, or intending to do so. That is what makes the stalking statute similar to the murder statute in terms of the evils or harms both are looking to prevent.”
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Mangione’s lawyers are asking Judge Gregory Carro to dismiss the state charges.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Fox News’ Jennifer Johnson and Maria Paronich contributed to this report.
