Luigi Mangione Back in Court for Jury Selection After Plea Deal Collapses

Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is due back in court Monday for a hearing focused on jury selection in his pending federal trial, following reports that a possible plea agreement recently collapsed.

Mangione, 28, a former Ivy League student, is also charged in a separate state murder case tied to Thompson’s fatal shooting in December 2024.

Federal prosecutors with the Justice Department and attorneys for Mangione have been negotiating the jury questionnaire for the federal case since April.

The proposed questionnaires have not been released publicly, though court filings show the two sides have clashed over their contents. In a May letter to the court, prosecutors objected to several questions suggested by the defense, arguing that some were repetitive or too invasive.

Among the information Mangione’s lawyers want from potential jurors are details about their housing arrangements, including whether they rent or own; their employment status; whether they have pursued goals as part of a group; whether they have children and information about them; and aspects of their religious background.

The defense also wants to question prospective jurors about any experiences involving jails, firearms or law enforcement, the television programs they watch, and whether they hold biases about the criminal justice system. Attorneys are additionally seeking to learn whether a juror regularly stays at the Hilton on Sixth Avenue, where the shooting occurred, and whether they work for or own stock in UnitedHealthcare.

Last week, reports citing anonymous sources claimed that Mangione’s attorneys and federal prosecutors were having discussions about a plea deal but were unable to come to an agreement. 

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In a statement to Fox, Mangione lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo called information attributed to anonymous sources, “a troubling, deliberate pattern by prosecutors and law enforcement to prejudice Luigi.”  A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on the reported plea negotiations.

Separately, Mangione’s lawyers floated and then withdrew a potential psychiatric defense in the state case.

They sent a one-sentence letter to the court, telling Judge Gregory Carro that they were withdrawing a notice made public just a day earlier that signaled plans to pursue an extreme emotional disturbance defense in his state case.

The move would have required Mangione to concede that he shot Thompson, a father of two, at his state trial. If he were later convicted under New York’s extreme emotional disturbance law, the murder charge would be reduced to manslaughter, and the potential sentence would be reduced from 25 years to life in prison to five to 25 years.

With his federal trial not scheduled to begin until early next year, it’s unclear how such a defense in the state case would have impacted that one. The federal case carries stiffer potential sentences, and there is no federal equivalent to New York’s emotional disturbance law.

Mangione is accused of plotting the murder, traveling across state lines to New York City ahead of a UnitedHealthcare business conference and shooting Thompson in the back outside the venue.

Prosecutors have alleged he had used a fake name to check into a Manhattan hostel and then fled to Altoona, Pennsylvania, where police arrested him at a McDonald’s restaurant.