Luigi Mangione Overruled Lawyers After Change of Heart on Psychiatric Defense, Legal Expert Says

Luigi Mangione has dropped plans to pursue a psychiatric defense in the state murder case involving the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, withdrawing the strategy just hours before a Thursday deadline to give prosecutors more details about his mental condition.

Attorneys for Mangione, 28, submitted a brief, one-sentence letter to Judge Gregory Carro, stating that they were retracting a notice made public the previous day that had indicated they intended to use a psychiatric-based defense. The filing offered no explanation for the reversal.

The sudden change may have come at Mangione’s direction, according to Randolph Rice, a Maryland attorney and legal analyst who has been closely tracking the case.

“He might have had a change of heart and said, ‘Wait a second, I’m going into state court. I’m admitting that I did this. How is this going to play when I’m facing even more serious charges in federal court in January of next year?’” Rice told News Agency on Friday.

The strategy would have carried major consequences for Mangione’s defense. To use it at trial, he would have had to acknowledge that he shot Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two. If a jury later found him guilty under New York’s extreme emotional disturbance statute, the murder charge could have been reduced to manslaughter, lowering the possible sentence from 25 years to life in prison to a range of five to 25 years.

Before Mangione withdrew the notice, prominent criminal defense attorney James Leonard told News Agency that the approach would have been “a very risky trial strategy for the defense.”

“They are basically telling the jury that Mangione committed the murder, but here is why he did it and, because of this, you should nullify his guilt,” he said. “If the jury accepts that, it would be an epic win for the defense team. If the jury rejects that, it [would] likely mean that Mangione will spend the rest of his life behind bars.”

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Rice said concerns about the federal prosecution likely factored into the decision.

“I have no doubt that this weighed on Mangione’s mind,” he added.

The former Ivy Leaguer is also facing a separate federal trial expected to kick off early next year, and it’s unclear how such a defense in the state case would impact that one. It carries stiffer potential sentences, and there is no federal equivalent to New York’s emotional disturbance law.

A spokesperson for Mangione’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We knew that this was gonna be one of these cases that’s gonna have a lot of twists and turns, and it is certainly living up to that,” Rice said.

Legal observers previously told News Agency that the psych defense would have required Mangione’s attorneys to convince jurors that he experienced a profound loss of self-control stemming from an intense emotional disturbance at the time Thompson was gunned down outside a Manhattan business conference.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have alleged that Mangione meticulously planned the killing for months, documenting his thoughts in journals and traveling across the country before shooting Thompson in the back outside a business event in New York City, where neither of them lived.

“I have no doubt that this is not the last time we’re going to see something like this where either the defense says something or even the prosecution may say something and then it completely gets changed and flipped on its head moving forward,” Rice said.