The Last Laugh
The prosecution of Luigi Mangione is a real mess—and it's about to get even worse
“After years of enduring severe pain from a broken back, navigating the obstacles of the health insurance system and witnessing similar experiences of countless others, I learned that United Healthcare would be holding its annual investor conference in New York City on December 4, 2024; although the specific location was not publicly disclosed.”
The defendant spoke with little emotion as he read a prepared statement.
He described how he researched the conference online and discovered it would be attended by executives of the firm, its board and prominent investors.
He described how he emailed the firm, “posing as an investor at a firm managing over $50 billion in assets and requesting information about the conference. Unlike my previous interactions with insurers, I received an immediate response within an hour.”
“Before traveling to New York, I used a 3D printer to make part of a gun, and I equipped the gun with the silencer and magazine,” he continued.
“My travel to New York and email to United Healthcare was with the intent to shoot Brian Thompson.”
“On the morning of 4 December 2024, I shot Mr Thompson in Manhattan and he died. When I did so, I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death or serious bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal.”
On Friday morning, as you may know, Luigi Mangione pled guilty in Manhattan federal courthouse to two stalking charges related to the murder of Brian Thompson, the former CEO of United Healthcare.
Interstate stalking resulting in death and stalking through the use of interstate facilities resulting in death—Mangione hadn’t made any kind of deal with the feds. Those were the only charges that remained after prosecutors lost their bid to hit him with a murder charge and the death penalty, which would have been richly deserved. A weapons charge was tossed by the judge too. That left two lesser charges of stalking.
The good news: Mangione still faces a second-degree murder charge in the pending state case; no death penalty, though.
But that trial, and a “marquee conviction” for local DA Alvin Bragg, may also be at serious risk.
Says The New York Post, “Just hours after the healthcare-hating pretty boy copped to charges in Manhattan federal court, which could land him life behind bars, his bulldog legal team filed papers asking to have his separate state murder case tossed out over double jeopardy.”
Mangione’s lawyers entered a motion to dismiss the state charges against him, claiming he was a “pawn” for federal and state prosecutors who have “have sensationalized this case and misapplied statutes in an effort to overcharge him.”
“By explicitly coordinating and planning the order of prosecutions against Mr. Mangione so as to maximize his punishment and increase each government’s chances to convict him, the facts here do not allow the District Attorney’s Office to continue to prosecute Mr. Mangione under the Fifth Amendment.”
Double jeopardy laws stop a person from being prosecuted more than once for the same crime. New York has a specific statute that prevents “a second or subsequent prosecution in New York State Court arising from the same transaction or occurrence as a previous case.”
Could this plan work?
I’m no legal expert, but two lawyers who spoke to The Post think so. They reckon the words of the New York double-jeopardy statute can be twisted in such a way prosecutors will have a very difficult time pursuing the case. Bragg’s office will be forced to “argue that the [stalking and murder] statutes are designed to protect against different evils, [that] there’s different facts that weren’t covered in the federal plea and charges.”
Who’s to blame for this unfortunate situation? Someone must be. The Post’s legal eagles both lay the blame squarely at the feet of the feds, who “sabotaged and torpedoed” the state case by pursuing their own after the judge had “gutted” the charges against Mangione.
“They should have dismissed the case and let the state [case] proceed,” one of the lawyers said.
On X, people are suggesting the feds might even have done this on purpose, since Bragg is a Soros DA and the man who got Donald Trump convicted of 34 felonies in his “hush money” case. But what’s that rule of thumb—never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity? Godwin’s Law? No, that’s the one about Hitler…
The great risk, of course, is that if he manages to dodge a murder charge altogether, Mangione’s star will only rise further. Mangione will farm even more aura and become even more of a hero to the worryingly large number of people who believe he is exactly that—a hero.
On Wednesday, two days before Mangione entered his plea, voice-of-a-generation Hasan Piker appeared on the New York Times podcast and yet again sought to justify the killer’s actions.
