By Jack Queen and Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Luigi Mangione will not face the death penalty after a US judge on Friday dismissed murder and weapons charges against the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in a major setback for federal prosecutors.
US District Judge Margaret Garnett in Manhattan said she felt constrained by Supreme Court precedent to dismiss the murder charge, calling it legally incompatible with the two federal stalking charges Mangione still faces.
Mangione still faces murder charges in a separate case brought by state prosecutors.
Federal murder statutes have different legal requirements than comparable state laws, and Garnett said federal law required Mangione’s murder and weapons charges to be linked to another crime of violence.
Stalking, said the judge, did not meet this requirement because it was neither “inherently” violent nor always intentional. Garnett acknowledged that the average person might be confused by the dismissal.
Mangione, 27, still faces a possible life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of the stalking charges.
Dominic Gentile, a federal prosecutor, told Garnett during a court hearing that the government has not decided whether to appeal.
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Mangione’s attorney, Karen Agnifilo, thanked Garnett for the “unbelievable” decision. Asked for Mangione’s reaction, she said, “we’re all relieved.”
Thompson, who led UnitedHealth Group’s health insurance business, was killed on December 4, 2024 outside the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan.
Mangione pleaded not guilty to all charges stemming from Thompson’s death, and has been in jail since his arrest in Pennsylvania five days after the murder.
While public officials have widely condemned Thompson’s murder, Mangione has become something of a folk hero for many Americans who decry the high costs of medical care and the practices of health insurers.
JUDGE NOTES ‘TORTURED AND STRANGE’ LEGAL ANALYSIS
Scott Sundby, a University of Miami law professor, said Garnett’s decision was based on Supreme Court precedent aimed at restraining federal prosecutors from using vague statutes to bring inappropriate violent crime charges.
“While the alleged manner in which Luigi did this would strike a lay person as undeniably violent, that is not the issue,” Sundby said. “The court’s concern is that prosecutors use a vaguely defined crime that gives them too much power,” Sundby said.
Garnett planned for jury selection to begin in September, with the trial beginning on October 12.
In her 39-page ruling, Garnett said federal prosecutors can pursue their murder and weapons charges only if the stalking charges qualify as crimes of violence.
She said the stalking charges did not qualify because people could break the law without intentionally using force.
Garnett acknowledged the “apparent absurdity” of the legal landscape, saying no one seriously doubts that Mangione’s alleged conduct — crossing state lines to kill a specific health care executive, and carrying a gun equipped with a silencer — was violent criminal conduct.
She said her analysis may strike ordinary people, and many lawyers and judges, as “tortured and strange,” and the result “contrary to our intuitions about criminal law.”
But she said her decision reflected “the court’s committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case. The law should be the court’s sole concern.”
EVIDENCE TAKEN FROM A BACKPACK IS ADMISSIBLE
In a separate ruling, Garnett denied Mangione’s bid to exclude evidence seized from his backpack when he was arrested.
Mangione argued that the evidence found in the backpack, including a 9mm pistol, silencer and journal entries, should be suppressed because police obtained it without a warrant.
The judge said it was standard practice for local police to search closed bags that could reasonably contain dangerous goods, and the police had probable cause to conduct a search. She also said the contents would inevitably have been discovered through a federal search warrant.
Mangione also pleaded not guilty to separate murder, weapons and forgery charges in New York state court in Manhattan.
No trial date in that case has been set. Prosecutors in that case suffered their own setback in September, when the judge dismissed two terrorism-related charges against Mangione.
(Reporting by Jack Queen and Ryan Patrick Jones; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot)