Judge Throws Out Death Penalty Charge Against Luigi Mangione, But Rules That His Backpack, Seized at McDonald’s, Can Be Used as Evidence

In a victory for the defense, a federal judge ruled on Friday that the government cannot seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the Ivy League graduate accused of fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson. District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed the two firearm counts, which includes the death penalty eligible charge, from the four count indictment, leaving two counts of stalking, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. The trial against Mr. Mangione will begin in October with jury selection scheduled for September 8. “This case will proceed to trial on Counts One and Two, which charge the Defendant with causing Brian Thompson’s death under federal stalking laws. The potential maximum punishment for each of those offenses is life in prison without parole,” the judge wrote in her order, published on Friday morning, less than an hour before the pretrial hearing was set to begin. An assistant United States attorney, Dominic Gentile, told the judge during the hearing that the government was “not prepared to say” if it was going to appeal the ruling. Judge Garnett gave federal prosecutors until February 27 to let her know via letter about a time line regarding their decision. The government could appeal her ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Luigi Mangione attends a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on December 18, 2025. Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty ImagesAt a later point during the hearing, however, Mr. Gentile told the judge that prosecutors were ready to go to trial in October. “We believe that the federal interest in this case is compelling,” he said, seemingly indicating that his team would move forward without appealing her ruling. But that decision is not up to him alone. Mr. Gentile must confer with the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, and also with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who publicly stated last April that she intended to pursue the death penalty in Mr. Mangione’s case. Mr. Mangione sat in the courtroom, dressed in beige prison garb, chatting with his lawyers. He has been held at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center for over a year. The 27-year old Maryland-native faces charges in three separate jurisdictions for the murder of Thompson, a Minnesota father of two: at a Pennsylvania state court, where he was arrested five days after the shooting, at Manhattan criminal court, and at the Southern District of New York, where the federal government charged him with an indictment that included “murder through the use of a firearm,” a death penalty eligible charge. Mr. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Last year, the defense team raised a legal technicality as grounds to dismiss the death penalty eligible charge, arguing that the two predicate acts are not “crimes of violence.”“Murder by itself is not a federal law. It’s a state law. You have to connect it to a federal law that is a predicate act,” an federal appeals attorney, who declined to give his name, explained to the Sun last week. A New York police officer walks outside a hotel in midtown Manhattan where Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot Wednesday, December 4, 2024, at New York. AP/Joe FrederickThe predicate acts in the federal indictment are count one and count two, interstate stalking and interstate cyberstalking. Count one alleges that Mr. Mangione “traveled from Georgia to New York… for the purpose of stalking and killing Brian Thompson,” and count two alleges that Mr. Mangione “used a cellphone, interstate wires, interstate highways, and the Internet to plan and carry out the stalking, shooting, and killing…” the indictment states.Count three alleges that Mr. Mangione “knowingly used and carried a firearm” and “caused the death of a person through the use of a firearm,” the indictment states. Count four alleges that the defendant was “equipped with a firearm silencer and firearm muffler.” In order to charge the firearm offenses, the predicate acts must be “crimes of violence,” which, according to the defense, the stalking statutes are not, because stalking is not an inherently violent crime. A person can stalk a victim without using any physical force, meaning the offense can be committed through harassment or intimidation, which are not always violent. Federal prosecutors disagreed, writing in their reply that the fact that the stalking “resulted in the death of the victim” makes it a violent crime. An officer from the Altoona, Pennsylvania police department asks Luigi Mangione his name at the McDonald’s. Altoona Police DepartmentOn January 9, Judge Garnett heard lengthy oral arguments from both sides, as the Sun reported. In her order she explained that her decision followed Supreme Court precedent, which defined a crime not by the defendant’s conduct in the specific case but by “the least serious conduct” of the crime as written in the statute. In other words, the Supreme Court held the legal definition of the crime higher than the personal conduct. “The Defendant is charged with selecting a stranger to be killed based on his employment; carefully planning the killing, including identifying where and when the selected victim would be most vulnerable; traveling across multiple states to carry out that killing; and then gunning the victim down on a public street in midtown Manhattan, using a handgun equipped with a silencer.” The order reads. “No one could seriously question that this is violent criminal conduct. And yet, over the course of the last two decades or so, the Supreme Court has embarked upon a legal journey, explained herein, that now requires lower courts to engage in an analysis totally divorced from the conduct at issue and centered on the hypothetically least serious conduct that the charged crime could possibly cover. This is typically shorthanded as the ‘categorical approach.’” Judge Garnett explained. In another crucial ruling, also published on Friday and also shortly before the court hearing began, the judge denied the defense’s request to suppress crucial evidence seized from his backpack during his arrest at a McDonalds.Mangione’s backpack. Altoona Police DepartmentFive days after Thompson was fatally shot, Mr. Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in the center of a small town called Altoona, about 270 miles west of New York City, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Defense attorneys argued that the arrest violated their client’s due process rights, because Mr. Mangione’s backpack was searched without a warrant. Inside the backpack, officers found a magazine loaded with bullets, which, according to New York detectives match the shell casings found at the crime scene, a 3D-printed handgun, a red notebook, as well as several USB sticks, lose notes that appeared to be a pencil-drawn escape map, and more than $7,000 dollars in cash.On January 23, Judge Garnett held a suppression hearing and heard testimony from Altoona Police Deputy Chief Nathan Snyder, who was not present during Mr. Mangione’s arrest, and asked about a general rule book that officers use to learn about and follow police protocol.Under cross-examination defense attorney Marc Agnifilo asked Mr. Snyder if there were any guidelines in the manual that pertained specifically to searching bags, to which the deputy chief replied, “I’d have to read through the entire manual.” Brian Thompson was walking along the sidewalk when a gunman emerges from behind an SUV and opens fire, striking him in the back. Courtesy of UnitedHealthcareSuppression hearings regarding the same issue were also held at Manhattan Criminal Court in December. Prosecutors called numerous Altoona police officers, who had been involved in the arrest, and who all testified that they followed police procedures when they searched the backpack, citing the “search incident to an arrest” regulation that permits the search of an arrested person and their immediate surroundings without a warrant, primarily for officers’ and the public’s safety. The presiding judge in the state case said he would rule on the matter on May 18. As the Sun reported, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office requested that the judge schedule the state trial for July 2. Defense attorneys said in a statement that the July date was “unrealistic” and that they needed the remainder of the year to prepare for the federal trial. Lead defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo mentioned the letter to Judge Garnett on Friday, who said she was aware of the request. Luigi Mangione appears with his attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo (L) for a pretrial evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on December 12, 2025. Christian Monterrosa-Pool/Getty Images“Unless someone wants to make an application,” the judge told the parties, “we will proceed as if this was the only case.” She said that she had not been asked officially to postpone her trial so that the state case could come first. The parties also discussed jury selection. Both parties, prosecutors and defense attorneys asked the judge for more time to screen the potential jurors. “The notoriety of this case, which continues to grow, requires an enormous amount of questionnaire,” Mr. Gentile told the judge. But Judge Garnett disagreed, saying “this district is no stranger” to famous defendants, citing recent cases such as the sex trafficking trial against the disgraced hiphop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. The judge referred to herself as the “fist” of the public, and said she wanted to ensure the defendant would receive a fair trial, but also be conscious of tax payer’s wallets, and of the jurors’ time. “Jurors have lives,” she noted, saying she did not wish to inconvenience them. Next week, the judge said, she would publish a schedule for the upcoming trial and pending pretrial motions. The next in-person pretrial hearing will take place some time in August.

Judge Throws Out Death Penalty Charge Against Luigi Mangione, But Rules That His Backpack, Seized at McDonald’s, Can Be Used as Evidence

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