NEW YORK (AP) — Luigi Mangione‘s legal professionals urged a choose Thursday to throw out his state homicide costs within the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing that the New York case and a parallel federal dying penalty prosecution quantity to double jeopardy.
If that doesn’t occur, they need terrorism costs dismissed and prosecutors barred from utilizing proof collected throughout Mangione’s arrest final December, together with a 9 mm handgun, ammunition and a pocket book by which authorities say he described his intent to “wack” an insurance coverage govt.
Mangione’s legal professionals additionally need to exclude statements he made to cops who took him into custody at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of New York Metropolis, after a five-day search.
Amongst different issues, prosecutors say the Ivy League graduate apologized to officers “for the inconvenience of the day,” and expressed concern for a McDonald’s worker who alerted them to his whereabouts, saying: “Lots of people will probably be upset I used to be arrested.”
Thompson’s Dec. 4 killing outdoors a Manhattan resort “has led to a authorized tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors as they struggle for who controls the destiny of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione,” his legal professionals, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan wrote in a 57-page courtroom submitting.
They referred to as the twin state and federal instances, plus a 3rd in Pennsylvania involving gun possession and different costs, “unprecedented prosecutorial one-upmanship.” They stated prosecutors ”try to get two bites on the apple to convict Mr. Mangione” of homicide.
“But, regardless of the gravest of penalties for Mr. Mangione, regulation enforcement has methodically and purposefully trampled his constitutional rights,” his legal professionals wrote. They allege officers questioned him with out telling him he had a proper to stay silent and searched his property with no warrant.
The Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace stated it could reply in courtroom papers.
The protection’s calls for to finish or restrict Mangione’s state case may preview his authorized technique for his federal homicide case, the place prosecutors intend to hunt the dying penalty. The state costs carry a most punishment of life in jail.
Mangione, who turns 27 on Tuesday, has pleaded not responsible in each instances. He has been held in a Brooklyn federal jail since authorities whisked him to New York by aircraft and helicopter after his arrest.
Mangione is due again in courtroom for the state case on June 26, when Decide Gregory Carro is anticipated to rule on the dismissal request. He subsequent federal courtroom date is Dec. 5, a day after the one-year anniversary of Thompson’s dying. No trial date has been set in both case.
Prosecutors had stated they anticipated the state case go to trial first, however Friedman Agnifilo stated final week that she needs the federal case to take priority as a result of it entails the dying penalty.
Together with in search of to dismiss the state case, Mangione’s legal professionals alternatively requested Carro to throw out costs alleging he killed “in furtherance of terrorism” and as an act of terrorism. They argue there are “completely no details to help this principle” and that charging him underneath a post-9/11 terrorism statute flouts the intent of lawmakers.
Surveillance video confirmed a masked gunman taking pictures Thompson from behind as the chief arrived for UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor convention. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” had been scrawled on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase generally used to explain how insurers avoid paying claims.
Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg has stated that the ambush “was a killing that was meant to evoke terror.”
Mangione’s federal costs embrace homicide by means of use of a firearm, which carries the potential for the dying penalty, together with two counts of stalking and a firearms offense.
Final month, U.S. Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi introduced that she was directing Manhattan federal prosecutors to hunt the dying penalty for the killing, calling it “an act of political violence” and a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”
The killing and ensuing search resulting in Mangione’s arrest rattled the enterprise group whereas galvanizing medical health insurance critics who rallied round Mangione as a stand-in for frustrations over protection denials and hefty payments.
Of their submitting Thursday, Mangione’s legal professionals argued that the conflicting theories of the state and federal instances — meaning to “intimidate or coerce a civilian inhabitants” vs. stalking a single particular person — has created a “authorized quagmire” that makes it “legally and logistically unattainable to defend in opposition to them concurrently.”
“This case is so constitutionally fraught that we’re laborious pressed to seek out precedent for such an unprecedented state of affairs,” Mangione’s legal professionals wrote.
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