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Luigi Mangione to appear in NYC court in UnitedHealthcare CEO murder case
By
Samantha Max
Published Feb 21, 2025
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Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images
By
Samantha Max
Published Feb 21, 2025
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The man accused of fatally shooting a UnitedHealthcare executive in Midtown last December is scheduled to appear in state court on Friday afternoon.
Luigi Mangione, 26, has pleaded not guilty to multiple state charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism and illegal weapons possession. He also pleaded not guilty to murder, a firearms offense and stalking in federal court. Prosecutors and the NYPD commissioner have condemned the killing, while some who are frustrated with the health care industry have called Mangione a hero.
Prosecutors said the Ivy League graduate traveled to New York City for UnitedHealthcare’s investor conference, waited outside CEO Brian Thompson’s hotel, shot him in the back and then fled. Police found him days later in Pennsylvania, after scouring through hundreds of hours of surveillance footage. When law enforcement arrested him, according to a federal charging document, they found a loaded 9 mm pistol, a fake ID, thousands of dollars in cash and a letter addressed “To the Feds.” Prosecutors said they also found a notebook in which he wrote about the investor conference and plans to “whack” an insurance company CEO.
Friday’s state court appearance is expected to be a routine check-in on the case's status. Gary Galperin, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said a judge will likely ask about whether prosecutors are properly sharing evidence with Mangione’s defense attorneys. He said the judge will also probably ask the defense about any motions that they’ve already filed or plan to file in the future.
A key legal question Galperin has is whether Mangione plans to use a psychiatric defense. New York law allows criminal defendants to argue that they shouldn’t be held responsible because of mental illness at the time of the crime. Galperin said the law would allow Mangione to argue that, if he did shoot Thompson, he didn’t realize it was wrong in the moment. He said Mangione could also argue that he was experiencing an extreme emotional disturbance — in other words, that he had some sort of understandable reason to use violence. A common example, he said, would be someone killing their spouse after catching them in an affair. But he said it would be difficult for Mangione to argue that being disenchanted with the health care system gave him a legitimate reason to single out a CEO.
“It’s a tough sell to a jury, in my opinion,” said Galperin, who now teaches at Cardozo School of Law.
He said criminal defendants do use psychiatric defenses somewhat frequently, but they’re not often successful. If Mangione’s attorneys decide to go that route, he said, forensic mental health professionals would examine him and produce reports about his mental state. Galperin expects a judge to learn in court Friday whether that will happen, because defense attorneys are supposed to file paperwork to start the process within 30 days of their client’s not guilty plea.
Mangione’s defense lawyers have not spoken about his mental state at prior court appearances.
Legal experts said they’re also curious about how the federal case against Mangione will proceed. Mangione still has not been indicted federally and his most recent court dates in the Southern District of New York have been postponed. Ron Kuby, a lawyer who has represented other high-profile clients, said he thinks the slow movement of the federal case could signal that prosecutors and defense attorneys are working to reach some sort of plea deal that could address both the state and federal charges.
If convicted, Mangione faces the possibility of a life sentence without the possibility of parole in state prison or the death penalty under federal law.
“The severity of the charges are largely performative,” Kuby said. “Mr. Mangione has a decent shot if he goes to trial of being acquitted of murder.”
But he said he wouldn’t be surprised if Mangione accepted a plea agreement that sentenced him to 25 or 30 years in a federal prison, where he said the conditions would likely be better than in an upstate New York prison. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York did not respond to a request for comment on the status of Mangione’s federal case.
Tagged
public safety
manhattan
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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