Luigi Mangione’s guilty plea to federal stalking charges Friday could complicate — or even derail — efforts to convict him of murder in state court, as legal experts told The Post his defense team may have found a strategic opening through “creative lawyering.”
Only hours after Mangione admitted to the federal charges in Manhattan, where he now faces the possibility of life in prison, his aggressive defense team moved to throw out the separate state murder case on double jeopardy grounds.
The maneuver is a highly technical one, but if successful, it could deny Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg a major conviction in one of the most closely watched prosecutions of his tenure.
“It’s very creative lawyering by his lawyers to do this,” said Mark Bederow, a veteran New York City defense attorney and former Manhattan prosecutor. “The loser here is the Manhattan DA.”
Mangione’s lawyers, Marc Agnifilo and Karen Friedman Agnifilo, contend that putting the 28-year-old on trial in state court for second-degree murder and multiple firearms charges would amount to prosecuting him twice for the same offense. Double jeopardy protections generally bar the government from bringing repeated prosecutions over the same crime.
Their argument is that, while the state and federal charges are not identical, both prosecutions arise from the same underlying act: the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Former prosecutor Neama Rahmani said New York has a particularly important statute that “says that there cannot be a second or subsequent prosecution in New York State Court arising from the same transaction or occurrence as a previous case.
“So that’s the magic language, the same transaction or occurrence,” he said.
Both lawyers said it’s likely that Mangione will see the state murder charges thrown out.
“It is essentially the same facts,” Bederow said of the state and federal cases. “I mean, the only real difference is the federal charges include the stalking component. But ultimately, it’s shooting and killing Brian Thompson.”
The only move that Bragg’s office has is to argue the circumstances of the murder charges are different from those in the stalking charges, the lawyers said.
“They’re gonna have 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,” Bederow explained.
Rahmani said the feds “botched” their case and in turn “sabotaged and torpedoed” Bragg’s case.
Federal prosecutors lost their bid to seek the death penalty against Mangione and the murder and firearms charges they mounted were also struck down — all of which should have prompted the feds to dismiss the leftover stalking charges, Rahmani explained.
“The case was completely gutted,” the lawyer said. “They should have dismissed the case and let the state [case] proceed.”
“There’s a very good chance that the state murder charges are going to be dismissed,” Rahmani said. “If I was the DA, I would be pissed that the feds completely sabotaged and torpedoed my case.”
In Mangione’s Friday motion to dismiss, he claimed he’s been a “pawn” for both prosecutors’ offices — “which 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,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote.
Either way, the Sept. 8 trial in the state case is unlikely to proceed on time, if it goes forward at all, with the double jeopardy arguments likely to be fought all the way up in New York’s top court, Bederow said.
“Ultimately, this is destined to be handled by the New York Court of Appeals, you would think,” Bederow said. “So this is gonna go on for some time. But I don’t think you’re going to be starting a trial on September 8. That’s for sure.”
Bragg’s office Friday said it is “prepared to litigate the defense motions.”
“The Manhattan DA’s Office remains committed to seeking justice for Mr. Thompson and his family,” said DA spokesman Doug Cohen.
If the state case gets dismissed, it would mean Mangione would avoid having to serve his sentence in a state prison and would instead get a slight upgrade in a federal facility, Bederow said.
Mangione is set to be sentenced in the federal case on Dec. 18. He faces life behind bars — though his sentence will be up to Manhattan federal court Judge Margaret Garnett.
In the state case, meanwhile, he faces 25-to-life in prison, with Garnett warning him on Friday that his potential sentence in the state case could come consecutively.
