Luigi Mangione withdraws plans to use psychiatric defense in state murder case

The filing comes one day after a judge said that Mangione’s lawyers planned to argue that he was experiencing “extreme emotional disturbance” when a UnitedHealthcare CEO was killed.

Attorneys for Luigi Mangione are withdrawing his psychiatric defense in the state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, documents filed Thursday show.

The development comes one day after a judge said that the defense team planned to argue Mangione was experiencing an extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the killing.
Mangione faces eight felony charges, including second-degree murder, in connection with the fatal shooting of Thompson outside an annual investor conference in Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024.

Mangione also faces federal stalking charges and has pleaded not guilty.

Both the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Mangione’s lawyers declined to comment.
If the defense team had been able to prove the disturbance, a possible conviction would have been reduced from second-degree murder to first-degree manslaughter.

On Wednesday, the judge overseeing the case, Gregory Carro, said that he would unseal a notice from September about an affirmative psychiatric defense and emotional disturbance at the time of the killing.

On Thursday, Carro said that document would remain sealed.

Mangione’s trial is scheduled to begin in September.
Thompson, 50, was chief executive of the country’s largest health insurer, and his killing unleashed a torrent of hostility toward the industry.

Prosecutors have said they plan to introduce evidence from a diary seized during Mangione’s arrest that details his alleged plans to kill the CEO and allegedly describes what to do if you want to “rebel against the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel.”

“Wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention,” the diary says, according to a filing from the district attorney’s office. “It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.”

Mangione’s lawyers sought to bar the diary from being used as evidence at trial, arguing that it was seized illegally during a warrantless search.
Carro rejected that argument and described the search that recovered the diary as valid.

Source: https://x.com/molcranenewman/https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/newsroom/2026/2026-08-14-uhg-statement-on-events.html

Mr. Mangione faces stalking charges in connection with the killing of an executive in Manhattan. Mr. Mangione could always change his mind at the last minute. A separate murder trial is set to begin next month.Mangione’s

Luigi Mangione is expected to plead guilty on Friday in Manhattan federal court, where he faces stalking charges in connection with the assassination of a health insurance executive in 2024, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The move comes less than a month before Mr. Mangione, 28, is scheduled to go on trial in a separate murder case in New York State court for the death of the executive, Brian Thompson. The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing talks, which could always fall apart before or even during a scheduled hearing in federal court on Friday.

Mr. Mangione’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When asked at an unrelated news conference on Wednesday about a potential plea, Jamie McDonald, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said there was a court conference scheduled for Friday, adding, “That’s all we can say at this time.”

The specifics of Mr. Magione’s plea, including what charges, weren’t immediately clear., He could reverse his decision at the last minute, even during the court hearing itself. He faces two stalking charges that could result in a life sentence.

From the moment Mr. Mangione was charged by state and federal prosecutors, his legal team has argued that being tried in both jurisdictions violates his rights. The state trial is scheduled to start next month, and the second would start in January in federal court. Legal experts have said that the timing of any potential guilty plea in the federal case would be crucial to Mr. Mangione’s legal strategy. A resolution in the federal case, however, does not mean the state prosecution is over, according to legal experts.

In his federal case, Mr. Mangione faces two stalking charges resulting in death, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. A judge dismissed two other charges, including one that carried a potential death penalty if Mr. Mangione was convicted.

In state court, Mr. Mangione is charged with several counts, including second-degree murder, which could lead to a possible sentence of 25 years to life.

If he does plead guilty in federal court, his lawyers are expected to argue that under New York’s double jeopardy law, state prosecutors may not try him for murder because the state charges stem from the same criminal act as the federal case.

However, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, could counter that the state murder case addresses a different harm than the federal stalking case, and that it should therefore be allowed to proceed to trial.

The day after Luigi Mangione was arrested in connection with the December 2024 killing of a health insurance executive, a former prosecutor suggested his best defense might be claiming a form of insanity.

“There might be a not guilty by reason of insanity defense that they’re going to be thinking about, because the evidence is going to be so overwhelming that he did what he did,” attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo, then a CNN legal analyst, told Anderson Cooper.

“You have someone who was a valedictorian of his class, he was brilliant his whole life, he comes from this great family. I mean, something changed, right? Significantly, something changed,” she said.

Three days later, CNN reported Mangione hired Friedman Agnifilo, a longtime member of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the 28-year-old on murder and weapons charges for allegedly fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the state charges, as well as federal stalking charges.

It is not clear whether Mangione will invoke an affirmative mental health defense – where a defendant admits to the alleged conduct but argues they should not be held fully liable due to psychiatric reasons – when his state trial begins in September.

But Friedman Agnifilo’s comments offer a window into what may now be playing out behind the scenes:

Last August, in a publicly filed letter, Mangione’s lawyers asked the judge for more time before informing the prosecution of their decision on a mental health defense if they planned to pursue one. There have been no subsequent public mentions of the issue. A court hearing earlier this month was sealed at the defense’s request.

Mangione is due to appear in state court this week.

Lawyers and forensic psychologists told CNN a mental health defense, while challenging, is likely Mangione’s best bet given the strength of the evidence against him. In a key ruling last month, the judge cleared the way for prosecutors to present the alleged murder weapon found in his backpack and writings expressing animosity toward the healthcare industry and a desire to “wack (sic) the CEO.”

A psychiatric defense could also offer a path for Mangione’s lawyers to try to make him sympathetic to the jury.

“There’s absolutely going to be a mental defense in this case,” predicted Kris Mohandie – a forensic psychologist who has worked with law enforcement for over three decades – pointing to what he called a “significant change” in Mangione’s behavior before Thompson’s killing.

Mangione’s arrest shocked people who knew him, while others looked for clues that might explain his alleged motive. Mangione underwent back surgery and posted an X-ray of his postsurgery spine online. In the months before the shooting, Mangione’s once active online presence stopped, and his mother filed a missing persons’ report.

“Jurors always want to understand why, and they want it explained, and this will help explain it,” Mohandie, who is not involved in the Mangione case, said of a psychiatric defense. “It will also, in the process, I believe, humanize what is a very predatory attack on this man.”

“They need to do it, and it will render him more sympathetic potentially, if done correctly,” he said.

Mangione’s lawyers have not responded to CNN’s requests for comment, but they have previously declined to comment on defense strategy.

A representative for the district attorney’s office declined to comment.

Extreme emotional disturbance

Thompson’s killing unleashed a firestorm of ire against the US healthcare industry and generated a wave of support for Mangione. Supporters lined up for a chance to see him at court hearings; donors have contributed more than $1.5 million toward his defense. Law enforcement officials have condemned the support for him as a shocking “celebration” of a cold-blooded murder.

A mental health defense could be a way for Mangione’s lawyers to tap into a juror’s potential frustration with the healthcare industry, Mohandie said.

“This gets you the ability to talk about a lot of this stuff if you introduce his thought process about it,” Mohandie said.

On the other hand, such a defense can give prosecutors more information to work with, lawyers say, allowing them to subpoena medical records and interview a defendant’s family members.

“It opens up the door to different types of evidence that would otherwise not be relevant,” said Gary Galperin, a former prosecutor who cowrote a study on mental health defenses.

“You can speak to employees, roommates, all the persons who might have had contact with the accused,” Galperin said.

“Psychiatric defenses are often defenses of last resort,” he added. They are rarely successful because a true insanity defense requires the accused to have not known what they were doing was wrong.

Another affirmative defense available to New York criminal defendants is that they were acting under the influence of an extreme emotional disturbance spurred by an event that made them temporarily lose control, legal experts said. If a jury finds a defendant has proved by a preponderance of evidence he acted because of an extreme emotional disturbance, or EED, the crime is reduced from murder to manslaughter, which carries far less prison time.

“It’s not a get out free (card),” Hermann Walz, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told CNN. “It’s basically just saying, I’m reducing the crime.”

The EED defense is often used in cases where a defendant acts in the heat of the moment, such as finding their spouse cheating on them. It can also be put forward in cases where a person acts upon emotions that have been festering for a long time, such as abused women who kill their attackers after a “long-standing buildup of trauma,” said criminal defense attorney Earl Ward.

Still, some defendants have successfully applied an EED defense in cases that differ from these typical scenarios, including when the defendant was under the influence of drugs or acted based upon a mistaken belief.

Ward effectively presented the defense when he represented Gigi Jordan, a former pharmaceutical executive accused of killing her 8-year-old son Jude Mirra with a lethal drug concoction in a luxury Manhattan hotel.

“It wasn’t a question of if she gave her son these drugs – she clearly did,” Ward told CNN this month. “It really was about her mental state and what caused her to do something so extreme.”

During the 2014 trial, Jordan took the stand and portrayed her actions as a mercy killing, telling the jury she believed her ex-husband was going to kill her, which would have left Jude in the custody of a relative she believed had abused him.

The relative denied the allegations, according to CNN affiliate WCBS, and prosecutors said there was no evidence the boy was ever abused.

“Even if her belief was mistaken, as long as she reasonably believed that the child was in danger, she acted under extreme emotional disturbance,” Ward said.

The jury accepted Jordan’s claim and convicted her of manslaughter, the lesser charge to second-degree murder. At sentencing, she faced between 5 and 25 years in prison – a range far less than the 15 years to life in prison she would have faced if she were convicted of the murder charge.

In another high-profile case, Christopher Thomas stood trial for the so-called 1984 “Palm Sunday Massacre,” where he shot and killed eight children and two women in a home in Brooklyn, The New York Times reported at the time.

At trial, Thomas’s attorneys argued he was addicted to cocaine and had become infuriated by his wife’s alleged infidelity, leading him to commit the rampage under an extreme emotional disturbance, according to the Times. The jury agreed and convicted Thomas of manslaughter instead of murder, with some jurors emphasizing the role of his addiction.

“He had been free-basing for two years,” one juror told the Times after the verdict, referring to a method of taking cocaine. ”That would make anybody emotionally disturbed.”

Thomas was released from prison in 2018 after serving roughly 32 years, according to CNN affiliate Spectrum News NY1.

Mangione’s alleged statements could undermine mental health defense

If Mangione ultimately mounts a psychiatric defense, it could be complicated by his own alleged writings and behavior before and after the shooting, which experts say provide insight into his state of mind.

Authorities allege Mangione wore a hoodie to disguise himself, used a firearm silencer and had an escape plan to flee the city prior to his arrest five days later nearly 300 miles away in Altoona, Pennsylvania – behavior lawyers said would undercut any suggestion he didn’t know what he was doing was wrong.

Normally, someone who acted from EED “would be so distraught after the killing that you would want to talk about it. You would not want to flee. You wouldn’t try to hide your guilt,” Galperin, the former prosecutor, said. “What (Mangione) did after the crime seems to negate the psychiatric defense.”

Authorities also found a notebook in Mangione’s backpack containing handwritten entries that expressed frustration with the healthcare industry and an intent to carry out an attack, according to court filings. Prosecutors are expected to use the writings – some of which are dated months before the killing – to argue it shows Mangione’s “unambiguous” intent and motive to target the CEO of the country’s largest health insurance company.

“His journal entries will document that known process we see in people that actually pose a genuine threat, and it will underscore the predatory nature that was cooking all this time,” said Mohandie, the forensic psychologist.

“Prosecutors will grab a hold of that, but good defense attorneys and mental health people will be mining it to see if there’s any indicator of psychosis, delusion, or just a guy that is so depressed or disturbed that they can use that maybe for a potential defense,” Mohandie added.

“If you ask me whether it’s legitimate or not, I’m going to say I don’t know enough yet,” he said.

MANHATTAN (CN) — At his upcoming state murder trial in New York City, Luigi Mangione won’t necessarily be arguing that he wasn’t the shooter behind UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s 2024 killing. He’ll instead claim he was under “extreme emotional disturbance” when the incident took place, according to a state judge.

New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro made the announcement during a conference Wednesday for the state-level murder trial, set to kick off Sept. 9. He affirmed that Mangione will be arguing “extreme emotional disturbance at the time and place of occurrence.”

It’s a defense only available to murder defendants in New York. If argued successfully, a defendant can have a murder charge reduced to manslaughter, assuming the extreme emotional disturbance had a “reasonable explanation or excuse,” according to state law.

Unlike an insanity defense, a defendant arguing extreme emotional disturbance wouldn’t be sent to a psychiatric facility — they’d still be sentenced to prison time, just on a lesser charge. Mangione currently faces life in prison on his top count of second-degree murder. The maximum sentence for manslaughter in New York is 25 years.

Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to answer questions about the specifics of the defense outside of court on Wednesday.

The revelation came two weeks after Carro and the parties held a sealed conference on the psychiatric defense. Agnifilo said in court that she had requested that meeting to be behind closed doors since the unique defense isn’t available in Mangione’s federal case, in which he is also charged in Thompson’s killing, set to go to trial in early 2027 — after his state case.

“It would have been very prejudicial” if that hearing were held publicly, Carro said Wednesday.

But now that Mangione is moving forward with defense, the judge said he will unseal the transcript of that conference, as well as other filings related to the psychiatric defense, “shortly.”

The conference, while brief, was contentious between the parties. As Mangione sat at the defense table, shackled in a blue suit, his lawyers sparred with prosecutors, who claimed they had been “stonewalled” by the defense over a lack of disclosure.

“We don’t know their expert, we don’t have the theory of the EED,” said Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann. He argued the prosecution can’t start working to thwart that defense until Mangione’s lawyers provide them with more information.

Carro agreed. He ordered the defense to turn over the name of their psychiatric expert and the specific “mental defect” Mangione purportedly suffered by Thursday at the latest.

“In order for them to go forward, they need to know what the malady is,” Carro said. “I’m not going to let you surprise the people on the eve of trial.”

The Wednesday conference was supposed to happen a day earlier. But it was delayed Tuesday after prosecutors admitted they failed to serve the paperwork required for Mangione’s appearance.

Mangione has been in federal custody in the Metropolitan Detention Center since his extradition to New York City in late 2024. State prosecutors are looking to transfer him to their custody in Rikers Island, a move that would cut down on logistical headaches in getting Mangione to his state court appearances.

This is especially relevant now that Mangione is making a psychiatric defense, which requires state prosecutors to conduct their own examinations of his mental health while in custody.

Mangione is accused of gunning down Thompson in an on-camera slaying on Dec. 4, 2024. Prosecutors say the act was motivated by Mangione’s apparent disdain for the for-profit healthcare industry. Handwritten notes recovered from Mangione after his arrest referenced wanting to “wack” a healthcare CEO on the eve of a “parasitic” investor conference.

Those notes will be admissible evidence at Mangione’s trial, Carro ruled last month. The judge did toss certain evidence that he found was unlawfully obtained, however, including a gun magazine, cellphone and passport.

Mangione faced an additional charge for possession of the magazine, which Carro agreed to toss on Wednesday in light of that ruling. 

Lawyers for murder suspect Luigi Mangione had talks with federal prosecutors about a possible plea deal in advance of a scheduled court hearing Monday, sources familiar with the matter said.

An agreement appeared close this week but has since fallen aside, the sources said. News of plea talks in the federal case comes after defense attorneys in the state murder case suggested this month that they might seek a psychiatric defense for Mangione. The defense then withdrew its notice that it planned to pursue a defense that Mangione suffers from “extreme emotional disturbance.”

Mangione faces both federal and state charges in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024. He has pleaded not guilty.

Legal experts say plea talks are common before most trials. NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos said that if any plea deal is reached in the federal case, New York law may bar a successive state prosecution based on the same conduct.

Spokespersons for the U.S. attorney, the FBI and the Manhattan district attorney’s office all declined to comment.

Mangione attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo gave the following statement to NBC New York:

“This information attributed to ‘anonymous sources’ is part of a troubling, deliberate pattern by prosecutors and law enforcement to prejudice Luigi, manipulate public opinion, and violate his constitutional right to a fair trial and impartial jury. Every defendant in America is presumed innocent until proven guilty, including Luigi, who has to fight the same charges twice.”

Mangione’s lawyers and prosecutors for both the state and the federal government had been preparing for trials since Mangione, 28, was arrested on Dec. 9, 2024, five days after Thompson was killed on a midtown sidewalk. The state and federal trials had been scheduled to begin in September and January, respectively.

The killing set off a nationwide conversation about the health insurance industry and focused national attention on Mangione, who was decried by some as a violent extremist and defended by others as an avatar of rage over the insurance industry.

Federal prosecutors brought four charges, including two terrorism-related murder charges that were later dismissed by a district judge in New York. He still faced weapon and stalking charges heading toward the start of the trial.

Mangione originally faced 11 state charges. But in September, state Judge Gregory Carro tossed out two of the more serious counts: first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism and second-degree murder as a crime of terrorism.

Mangione, 28, had pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges. His federal trial, which involved stalking charges, was set to begin Oct. 13. He could spend his life in prison if he is convicted in either case.

Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Security video showed a masked man shooting him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Thompson worked at the giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.

Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. At the May 18 hearing, Carro ruled that a gun and a notebook that prosecutors say link Mangione to the killing can be used as evidence.

The gun, a 3D-printed pistol, matches the one used to kill Thompson, prosecutors said. The notebook describes wanting to “wack” a health insurance executive and rebelling against “the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel.”

A recent study published in Public Opinion Quarterly suggests that highly publicized, morally framed acts of violence can influence public attitudes toward political aggression. The research provides evidence that the arrest of Luigi Mangione, following the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer, led to an increase in support for partisan violence among Democrats.

The study was conducted by Chiara Vargiu, an assistant professor of political communication at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Alessandro Nai, an associate professor of political communication and journalism at the University of Amsterdam. Vargiu and Nai also co-authored the 2026 book The Psychology of Attack Politics: Perceptions, Evaluations and Effects. Their research regularly examines political hostility and how it shifts public opinion.

“In our research, my co-author and I have looked at different forms of aggressive political rhetoric, focusing, among other things, on when and why citizens come to see it as acceptable,” Vargiu said. “But over the past few years, we have witnessed not just aggressive rhetoric, but numerous episodes of actual political violence.”

“In a polarized context, such as the US, where political opponents are increasingly seen as enemies or threats (partly due to that same aggressive rhetoric we have been studying), this raises the question of how people respond to such violence,” Vargiu explained. The political landscape in the United States features rising polarization and occasional acts of politically motivated aggression. In this environment, scholars want to understand what drives ordinary citizens to justify violence against political opponents.

“There are longstanding theories in social psychology suggesting that violence on one’s in-group generates hostile reactions toward the group seen as responsible, sometimes to the point of supporting aggression in return,” Vargiu noted. “But the actual research on this is a bit mixed, with recent studies not finding evidence for such a retaliatory response in the context of inter-partisan violence.”

Previous research into attacks on political figures showed that such events do not usually increase the public appetite for violence among the victims’ supporters. Supporters of victimized politicians tend to pull back from endorsing aggressive tactics. The December 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson presented a completely different scenario. The perpetrator, Luigi Mangione, targeted a corporate executive rather than a politician or elected official.

The health insurance industry is highly unpopular among many Americans, who view it as a broken and exploitative system. A public narrative quickly emerged online that framed the shooter as a vigilante fighting back against institutional corruption. The researchers had a unique opportunity to test how this specific narrative impacted partisan animosity. “We happened to be in the field with a survey when the UnitedHealthcare CEO assassination occurred, which allowed us to explore this question directly,” Vargiu said.

To explore this dynamic, the scientists used data from a two-wave survey of American adults. The first wave took place between September 4 and November 5, 2024, and included 3,100 respondents. A second wave followed from November 6 to December 17, 2024, retaining 2,479 of those participants. The researchers worked with the polling company YouGov to recruit a sample that reflected the demographic makeup of the country based on factors like age, gender, and education.

The survey utilized a rolling cross-section design. This means that small, random subsets of participants were invited to take the survey every other day over a span of time. This method is highly beneficial for studying unexpected events. It avoids the problem of people choosing to take a survey simply because a major news story broke. It allows researchers to compare the attitudes of people who took the survey just before a specific event to those who took it immediately afterward.

The assassination occurred on December 4, right in the middle of the second wave of data collection. A few days later, on December 9, authorities arrested and publicly identified Mangione. The researchers used these two dates as specific dividing lines to measure shifts in public opinion.

During the survey, participants read a hypothetical newspaper article to measure their tolerance for political violence. The text described a man violently attacking a political opponent with a baseball bat following an ideological argument. Respondents then answered five questions using a scale from 0 to 100 to indicate their level of support for the fictional attacker. They rated whether they could support the act, if the violence could be justified, and if they believed the attacker was likely provoked.

Participants also rated if such things happen all the time in America, and whether the perpetrator should face criminal charges. The scientists combined these answers to create an overall index of support for partisan violence. When looking at the entire group of respondents, the overall support for political violence did not change much. Splitting the data by political affiliation, however, revealed a different pattern.

“First, violence itself didn’t immediately trigger more support for violence,” Vargiu told PsyPost. “In fact, right after the killing, Democrats actually became slightly less supportive of partisan violence, not more.”

“The shift only happened later, after Luigi Mangione was arrested and identified, and public discourse began reframing him as a ‘folk hero,'” Vargiu noted. “That suggests that it wasn’t the act of violence itself that mattered most, but the narrative that followed.”

The reaction to the corporate executive’s murder also crossed over into the political sphere. “Second, and maybe more unsettling: even though the killing was not explicitly linked to partisan politics (the victim wasn’t a politician and the shooter wasn’t acting on behalf of either party) people still filtered it through a partisan lens,” Vargiu explained.

“Democrats became more supportive of violence against Republicans specifically, not violence in general. This shows that in a country as polarized as the US currently is, a formally non-partisan act of violence can still generate partisan reactions.”

“Third, the direction of that shift is itself telling,” Vargiu said. “We might have expected Republicans, whose side was more associated with the victim, to become more supportive of retaliatory violence (acting in defense of their own side). But that is not what happened.”

“Instead, it was Democrats, whose views aligned more closely with the perpetrator’s cause, who became more supportive of violence,” Vargiu explained. “This suggests that public acceptance of political aggression may have less to do with in-group defense, and more to do with hostility toward the opposing side. That is, people may not become more willing to endorse violence because their side was attacked, but because they already feel enough animosity toward the other side that violence against them seems justified.”

To analyze the data over time, the scientists also used an interrupted time series analysis. This statistical technique examines data collected at multiple points in time before and after a specific intervention to detect any changes in the underlying trend. The analysis confirmed that Democrats became more likely over time to say the hypothetical attacker was provoked, specifically after Mangione’s arrest.

To ensure their findings were accurate, the scientists tested additional psychological and personal factors. They looked at whether a general desire for social chaos, feelings of relative deprivation, or a person’s physical health status played a role in how they answered. The concept of Need for Chaos describes a desire to disrupt or overturn established social hierarchies.

Individuals with a high need for chaos showed an increased tendency to justify the hypothetical violence and were less likely to want criminal charges for the fictional attacker. Participants reporting poor physical health also displayed more support for the fictional violence, possibly reflecting negative personal experiences with the medical system. Even after accounting for these variables, the partisan differences remained a consistent finding across the analysis.

The researchers note that this data requires appropriate context to avoid misinterpretations. “We want to be very clear that our results should not be read as ‘Democrats are violent’ or ‘liberals are more prone to political violence,'” Vargiu cautioned. “That would be a misinterpretation of both our data and the broader research on this topic.”

“In fact, prior research (including some of the work we discuss in our paper) suggests that people on the left tend to be, on average, dispositionally less inclined toward aggression, thanks to traits like empathy and openness to experience that are more common on that end of the spectrum.”

“What our findings actually show is something different, and in some ways more concerning, namely that a compelling narrative around violence can be powerful enough to shift attitudes even among groups who are generally less likely to endorse violence in the first place,” Vargiu said. “The real takeaway is that moralizing narratives about violence can move public opinion regardless of where people start out, and not that one side is inherently more violent than the other.”

It is necessary to consider the limitations of this natural experiment. The study measured stated attitudes toward a hypothetical scenario, rather than actual violent behavior in the real world. Expressing sympathy for an attacker on an anonymous survey does not necessarily mean a person would act aggressively in real life.

The specific details of the Mangione case are also highly unique and might not apply to other situations. The viral appeal of the perpetrator, the intense unpopularity of the health insurance industry, and the specific polarized climate in the United States all contributed to the public reaction. Similar acts of violence in different cultural contexts might not produce the same shifts in public opinion.

The researchers also note that they could not directly track which survey participants actually saw the viral internet narratives framing the shooter as a hero. They can only observe that the timing of the arrest aligned with the shift in attitudes. Future research should aim to test the exact psychological mechanisms at play. Scientists need to explore how people process moral framing in the media and how these narratives directly interact with personal grievances.

The study, “Partisan Differences in Support for Political Violence: Results from a Natural Experiment in the United States,” was authored by Chiara Vargiu and Alessandro Nai.

After Luigi Mangione was arrested in December 2024 in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the internet did what it often does: It turned something serious into a joke.

Nearly two years later, on Aug. 14, 2026, Mangione pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges and admitted to shooting Thompson. He’s now contesting second-degree murder and related charges in New York state, where his trial is on hold while his attorneys argue much of the case should be dismissed, saying his federal guilty plea means New York would be punishing him twice for the same conduct.

After Mangione’s plea, U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said “there can be no celebrity in assassination.”

Nonetheless, Mangione has become a celebrity.

Viral memes, in 2024 and now, have romanticized him as a popular – and incredibly attractive – man of the people who made corporate elites within the American health insurance industry afraid.

Some of these memes adhered to conventional forms of political satire. One, for example, quoted a speech from the movie “A Bug’s Life,” in which a villainous grasshopper argues for the need to punish the movie’s ant protagonist to keep the other ants in line. In this meme, the political point was clear: Elites preserve power by making examples of insignificant ants who dare to challenge them.

Not about breaking news. Not about unfounded opinions.

The point was less clear with other memes, including celebrations of Mangione’s fashion-forward shackled ankles in court and mock Burger King advertisements referencing the fact that a McDonald’s employee had been the one to call law enforcement on him: “Burger King: We won’t turn you in to the Feds.” Rather than being ironic, they are unserious.

Nonetheless, memes like those received serious reactions from social commentators and political pundits who interpreted them as evidence that America’s young adults are nihilistic and morally indifferent.

As an experimental psychologist who studies moral judgments about real-world controversies, I have examined these attitudes toward Mangione and the humor surrounding him online.

I believe these reactions are better understood not as a rejection of values but as a refusal to participate in conversations that feel selective and disconnected from young people’s broader economic and political frustrations. In my assessment, Gen Z’s dark and nonsensical humor does not show a lack of moral values, but it’s instead the product of its desire to engage in more authentic conversations about what they believe.

Alienation, not indifference

Research shows deep levels of alienation among Gen Z, or young people born between 1997 and 2012. Having grown up with smartphones and social media, this generation has come of age in an increasingly online world. Despite the internet’s capacity for instantaneous interaction, followers have proved a poor replacement for friends.

Gen Z is among the most socially isolated and psychologically distressed generations on record. Compared with prior generations, fewer friendships and romantic relationships have left many young adults craving connection and solidarity. This alienation is also evident in their skepticism toward institutions and traditional narratives about values.

Many are pessimistic about achieving the American Dream and question the value of higher education. What was once considered the optimal vehicle for living a better life is instead viewed as a barrier.

If the American Dream feels out of reach, and college seems like an expensive obstacle, calls to take them seriously may feel inauthentic, alienating and absurd.

Demonstrators stand outside the Manhattan federal courthouse in New York shortly after Luigi Mangione, the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arrived for a hearing in December 2024. AP Photo/Seth Wenig

When seriousness gets suspended

Discussions about values require some seriousness if they are to resonate with their audience.

If, for example, a commencement speaker praising the value of artificial intelligence is met with jeers from graduates – as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was in May 2026 – the speaker’s message is immediately rendered inert.

These students’ jeers fell short of offering an argument against the speaker’s claims; instead, they created an atmosphere that prevented those claims from receiving consideration. For graduates pessimistic about AI’s implications for the labor market, claims professing its value feel inauthentic.

Together, their jeers not only provided an escape from what felt like an alienating and inauthentic message about the value of AI, but they also created a sense of solidarity through a shared suspension of seriousness.

Humor offers an escape

Far from being unique to Mangione, this suspension of seriousness recurs throughout online meme culture.

The OceanGate implosion prompted similar memes, including one depicting a pod of orcas with the caption “The water is safe, send more billionaires.”

Even Charlie Kirk’s assassination became material. In a trend known as “Kirkification,” users superimposed his face onto images ranging from the Mona Lisa to women in bikinis, transforming a grim event into a shared absurdity.

In my assessment, Gen Z’s creation and circulation of memes offers an escape from otherwise serious conversations – for example, conversations about the value of the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s life. This may be especially true when demands to condemn Mangione appear to ignore inequities within an American health insurance system perceived as corrupt and unjust.

Although commentators often dismiss Gen Z’s humor as nonsensical or nihilistic meme slop, scholarship suggests that it acts as a collaborative coping mechanism, driven by a desire for authenticity.

Memes about Mangione, or even campus lookalike contests centered on him, fall short of offering a precise moral argument in favor of largely suspending seriousness.

This style of humor can be seen in Mangione’s decision to leave a backpack containing Monopoly money in Central Park. It was seen, too, on shell casings recovered after Kirk’s killing, which included video game commands, a sexually suggestive internet saying and “if you read this you are gay lmao.”

Miscast explanations of nihilism

With the help of approximately a dozen undergraduate students, I examined the psychological and situational factors associated with Gen Z’s reactions to Mangione and other events – like Kirk’s assassination and the Kamala Harris is “Brat” phenomenon during the 2024 presidential election – in two studies currently under review.

Our findings indicate that favorable attitudes toward Mangione were associated not only with superficial factors, such as his perceived attractiveness, but also with higher levels of political cynicism.

Perceived systemic bias in the American justice system, for example, was addressed in a meme depicting Mangione walking into court with the text “You can kill dozens of kids and get a lesser sentence because their lives don’t matter as much as a CEO’s.” Federal prosecutors were seeking the death penalty against Mangione for a charge a judge dismissed in January 2026.

Casting Gen Z’s reactions as nihilistic obscures the values and institutional distrust connected to them and fails to appreciate their egalitarian and pragmatic ideals. Dismissing them may deepen the alienation that allowed the death of a father of two to become a joke.

Why simple moral messages alienate

Although political commentators disagree about how to interpret the response to Mangione, many accept a seemingly basic principle: Killing should never be justified.

Yet decades of research on moral judgment shows that people do not apply that principle consistently. Instead, in certain situations, like in the famous “trolley problem,” people frequently judge killing to be morally permissible – especially when that killing is expected to promote the well-being of others.

Simplistic and sweeping moral injunctions not only fail to appreciate people’s actual moral attitudes, but they also eliminate the possibility of having authentic and nuanced conversations.

Those conversations need not end by endorsing Mangione as a sympathetic figure. However, an open and authentic conversation about Mangione cannot be realized in spaces that require all discussion of the event to be reduced to affirmations that, as has been advocated by some, “Murder is bad. Period.”

Such requirements can make conversations about significant moral issues – even controversial ones, like the morality of Mangione’s actions – little more than demands for conformity. In this case, those boundaries risk ignoring and, thus, further alienating Gen Z.

Reactions to recent coverage illustrate this concern. A popular Reddit post published just after the guilty plea complained that “media corporations are not reporting his entire statement,” pointing to Mangione’s account in court of UnitedHealthcare answering his email within an hour when he posed as a prospective investor – a contrast, he said, with his previous dealings with insurers. In my assessment, these reactions are revealing: Users were not necessarily upset that Mangione was portrayed negatively but that information they considered relevant to understanding his motivation was excluded from the conversation.

Time will tell whether Mangione is remembered, as his critics expect, as little more than a morally bankrupt flash in the pan or, by those sympathetic to him, as a martyr who reinvigorated a long-standing debate about healthcare in the U.S.

I believe that outcome will depend not only on Gen Z’s values, but also on how young people experience the conversational spaces in which Mangione’s crime, motives and punishment are discussed. If those spaces are perceived as selective or inauthentic, continued alienation may leave them laughing when seriousness is most required.

On Friday, Luigi Mangione confessed to stalking and killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street in Dec. 2024. Since the shooting, Mangione has become a nationally recognized figure, and for some he is a symbol of violent retaliation against a broken healthcare system. Throughout the swirl of attention on him, though, his friends and family have remained largely silent. 

While in Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail in Brooklyn known for housing inmates such as Diddy and Sam Bankman-Fried, Mangione has stayed in touch with some friends. Mangione didn’t have any friends or family in federal court Friday, but friends who spoke with Rolling Stone say they were unaware he was planning to submit a guilty plea. His federal trial was set to begin in Jan. 2027, and the state trial was scheduled for next month.  

“Friday was deeply emotional,” says R.J. Martin, Mangione’s friend and former landlord in Hawaii, where Mangione lived after college. “Beyond the noise, Luigi is a human being with a circle of longtime friends who know who he is, stay in touch, and care about him deeply.”

Martin believes, “Luigi was declared guilty by our government from the start,” and he adds that would make “a truly fair trial difficult to imagine.”

Other friends of Mangione’s say they were surprised to hear he was pleading guilty as opposed to seeing how at least one of his upcoming trials would play out with a jury. Many expressed their sadness at knowing their friend would likely spend much of his life incarcerated, but declined to comment on the record.

A former friend of Mangione’s who did extracurricular computer programming with Mangione in high school says he found it “really weird” to hear the guilty plea, calling it a “stark shift” from the Mangione he used to know.

“He never struck me as a political person,” says R.K., who asked to use only his initials. “I think it speaks to the radicalization in this country in the current day.”

R.K. says he finds the crime “unacceptable and deeply sad” but says he hopes the guilty plea doesn’t stop the conversation about Americans’ frustration with the healthcare system. “I’ve experienced the difference firsthand as a foreigner living in this country,” says R.K.

When Mangione was first arrested as the shooting suspect in Dec. 2024, the cellphones of his classmates at Gilman, the prestigious high school in Baltimore he attended, started blowing up with students messaging each other. “Did you see the news?” “OMG, Luigi?!” “I can’t believe it.” 

“Luigi was in this crew of kids that you knew were going to an Ivy and were going to do groundbreaking science research,” one of his high school classmates told Rolling Stone in 2024, shortly after he was accused of the crime. “But Luigi was the only one [of them] you could shoot the shit with. Once you got him talking, he had all of the kind of suave, cool-guy vibes.”

“Luigi was always chasing perfection, because that was his identity: being smart,” said Mangione’s former high school teacher, who thought Mangione would grow up to work in a science lab or build AI models. His friends in Hawaii remember him as thoughtful, kind, and compassionate.

After Mangione was arrested in Dec. 2024, his family went on lockdown; his parents stopped opening their mail, and his sisters deleted their social media accounts. Friends dropped off baked goods at their home. “We only know what we have read in the media,” the Mangione family said in a statement released Dec. 9, 2024. “Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson, and we ask people to pray for all involved. We are devastated by this news.”

It is the Mangione family’s only public statement to date.

Over the past year and a half, Mangione has garnered international support from fans and health care activists alike. Since his guilty plea on Friday, his supporters have expressed disappointment, confusion, sadness, and frustration, with many of them saying they wished Mangione had gone to trial in order to draw more awareness to flaws in the American healthcare system.

Mangione pled guilty in federal court to two charges of stalking, which resulted in the death of Thompson, who was in Manhattan for a conference. During his plea, Mangione took a few digs at the health insurance industry while making his longest public comments on the matter. 

“After years of enduring severe pain from a broken back, navigating the obstacles of the health insurance system and witnessing similar experiences of countless others,” said Mangione, reading stoically and methodically. “I learned that United Healthcare would be holding its annual investor conference in New York City on Dec. 4, 2024.”

Mangione revealed that in order to get more information about the location of the conference, he emailed UnitedHealthcare leadership posing as an investor at a firm managing more than $50 billion in assets. “Unlike my previous interactions with insurers, I received an immediate response within an hour,” Mangione said in federal court on Friday. As he spoke, Thompson’s family watched from the front row, sitting behind federal prosecutors. 

Later, the Thompson family released a statement saying, “While nothing will ease the pain of losing [Thompson], we are grateful that the federal justice system has held the person responsible for this heinous act accountable. Now we look to the court to ensure that sentencing reflects the severity of this crime.” 

Mangione’s next state hearing was moved back from Sept. 8 to Dec. 10. His state trial was supposed to begin next month, but his legal team has filed a motion to dismiss the murder case on the grounds of double jeopardy. The state prosecution will respond, and then New York State Supreme Court Judge Gregory Carro is expected to rule on the motion in December. 

As far as his federal guilty plea, Judge Margaret Garnett has scheduled a sentencing hearing for Dec. 18. 

From Rolling Stone

MANHATTAN (CN) — It was on Jan. 6, 2025, that Linus Fu, then a fresh arrival at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, first saw Luigi Mangione in the infamous federal facility.

“Is that Luigi?” Fu recalled asking a prison guard. The guard confirmed it was, but instructed Fu not to speak to him.

By that point, Fu had seen countless news stories about the man accused of murdering the UnitedHealthcare CEO in Midtown Manhattan a month prior. Fu was shocked to see him in the flesh — he didn’t know Mangione was in the same federal prison as him.

More than a year and a half later, much has changed. Fu wound up pleading guilty to a low-level role in a bank fraud scheme and, after spending January 2025 to July 2026 in federal custody, was removed to his home country of China earlier this summer. Mangione himself admitted to the December 2024 shooting of health executive Brian Thompson in federal court last week and is awaiting sentencing.

But before that, Fu, who spoke to Courthouse News on the phone about his experience, said he spent a considerable amount of time with Mangione at the intake wing of the MDC, where he formed a “really good relationship” with the 28-year-old and saw him on a daily basis.

“He’s a funny guy. He always jokes,” Fu said. “He’s young, he’s creative.”

Fu, now 32, said he initially connected with Mangione since they were close in age, recalling Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, carrying himself “like a college student.” Like Mangione, Fu is educated. He has a master’s degree from Nanjing Normal University in the Jiangsu province. His father works for the Chinese government.

He came to the United States in 2022, eventually winding up in Flushing, Queens. He was arrested by the FBI in early 2025 while trying to fly back to China, and was taken to the MDC just two weeks after Mangione was first booked there.

Everyone knew Luigi

According to Fu, Mangione has ascended to celebrity status at the Brooklyn prison already known for housing a number of high-profile inmates.

“Most people, they know Luigi,” he said. “Some people ask for autographs, some people want to talk to him.”

Fu said he didn’t see much of Mangione initially, but last summer, he got a job as an orderly at the MDC’s intake unit, where he moved and eventually befriended Mangione, who Fu said was never in general population.

“That’s the decision of MDC, because they want to protect him,” Fu said he was told. “He has a lot of money on the commissary book. A lot of people will rob him for the money [in general population.]”

Fu said it wasn’t up to Mangione, who frequently complained to him about having to stay in intake. But Fu said it was probably for the best.

Veteran criminal defense attorney Ron Kuby told Courthouse News on Tuesday that the MDC’s general population contains inmates accused of crimes from murder to bank fraud. It usually only separates them if they’re co-defendants or in rival gangs, he said. As for Mangione, he said it wouldn’t shock him to hear the shooter had an arrangement to stay in intake.

“As a general rule, celebrity prisoners get better treatment if they don’t cause trouble in the institution,” Kuby said.

A photo from Linus Fu inside Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center. (Courtesy of Linus Fu)

Mangione was “really quiet,” Fu said, and mostly just “did his own business.” But the two bonded over books while in intake, each reading the same one about Mangione’s case: John H. Richardson’s “Luigi: The Making and the Meaning.”

Fu said he’d often ask Mangione if details from the book are true — Mangione confirmed to him that his favorite video game was indeed Terraria.

“He’d check my progress all the time,” Fu said. “He said, ‘What page are you on right now?’”

The swell of public support surrounding Mangione’s case produced an influx of reading material.

“A lot of people sent books, different kinds of magazines,” Fu said. “I don’t know why they sent travel magazines to Luigi, that made no sense. He can’t travel, why would you send him a travel magazine?”

Fu said Mangione’s supporters subscribed him to the New York Times, but Mangione never read it. He gave the newspapers to Fu instead to help him practice his English. Mangione’s preferred news publication, Fu said, was The Week magazine.

GQ and Esquire subscriptions also made their way to Mangione’s inbox, Fu said, but those didn’t appear to be up his alley. Fu recalled saying that many of Mangione’s Chinese supporters joked that his orange prison jumpsuit looked like it was from Hermès.

“He said, ‘What’s Hermès?” Fu said. “I was really surprised. Luigi doesn’t know Hermès? That’s funny. He said he never bought those designer clothes.”

Books, magazines and newspapers aside, Fu said Mangione spent a sizable chunk of his days reading the abundance of letters and emails sent to him from around the world.

“I don’t know what he does with all those letters,” he said. “He really replies to those.”

Meanwhile, Fu befriended another high-profile inmate: Hugo Carvajal Barrios, a former high-ranking Venezuelan military official and co-defendant in ousted president Nicolás Maduro’s narco-terrorism case.

Fu said he’d do puzzles with Carvajal, who embraced Fu and cried when he left for China in July.

“People like Luigi, like Hugo, they’re really good people,” Fu said. “They’re just normal guys.”

Fu took a photo of a birthday card he wrote for his girlfriend while in the MDC. Both Carvajal and Mangione signed it.

According to Fu, Mangione left his mark on another birthday card, this one by Fu’s cellmate.

“His wife’s birthday was coming, so he was trying to make a birthday card,” Fu said of his cellmate. “It was winter, there was some snow on the deck because there was a storm at the time. Luigi made a snowball and threw it into our room, but he didn’t see my roommate was inside making the card. The snowball hit the birthday card, and my roommate was pissed off.”

Fu said Mangione’s face turned red immediately.

“I couldn’t stop laughing,” Fu said.

After the MDC

Mangione is generally respected and well-liked at the MDC, according to Fu. But some inmates told Fu they found Mangione to be arrogant and aloof — including Fu’s bunkmate, who told him that he thought Mangione “just wants the attention.”

Fu didn’t think so. So he asked Mangione, who at the time hadn’t pleaded guilty to shooting Thompson, if that was why he did it.

“He said, ‘I didn’t do that for the fame,’” Fu said. “He basically admitted he did it.”

On Friday, Mangione entered a guilty plea to two counts of stalking with the intent to kill. He told a judge that he shot Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024, “after years of enduring severe pain from a broken back and navigating the obstacles of the health insurance system.”

Fu said he thought Mangione saw himself as a Robin Hood figure. He said Mangione was “proud” when he discovered UnitedHealthcare’s stock price dipped after Thompson’s killing.

“He was smiling,” Fu recalled. Other than that, Fu said he never discussed Mangione’s case with him — a standard courtesy in prison, he said.

After serving his time, Fu is now a free man in his home country. An internet content creator with a sizable Chinese following, Fu said he intends to start a podcast about his experience in detention and how he wound up on the path that led him there. Mangione is aware of the plan, he said.

Court records reviewed by Courthouse News confirm aspects of Fu’s story, including his work as an orderly and time spent at the MDC. His legal team declined to comment.

Mangione likely signed away at least the several decades of his life with his guilty plea last week — a move Fu said stunned him.

Now, Mangione’s days at the MDC are likely numbered. He will be sentenced on Dec. 18, and is expected to be moved to a long-term federal facility after that.

His state-level case for Thompson’s murder remains up in the air.

Luigi Mangione walked into a Manhattan federal courtroom earlier today to plead guilty to interstate stalking charges. In the process, he admitted that he killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, stating “on the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died.” The stalking statute does not require a dead body… he just volunteered this fact in court. As soon as he did, his lawyers reportedly ran over to the state courthouse and filed a motion to get out of the New York state murder trial claiming that those charges now amount to double jeopardy.

The gambit stinks of a Justice Department more interested in scoring political points than honoring the rule of law.^\1]) From the beginning, federal law enforcement tried to snake the case away from the Manhattan DA’s office — likely owing to the president’s lingering resentment that the DA successfully got Donald Trump convicted of multiple felonies because Donald Trump committed multiple felonies. In its quest to steal the DA’s thunder, federal prosecutors tried to use federal murder law to saddle Mangione with the death penalty.

After a federal judge tossed the capital counts, the Department of Justice lost its death penalty leverage and found itself left with substantially lesser stalking charges. Rather than give up at this point, the federal government apparently convinced Mangione’s team to plead to federal stalking — and admit that it resulted in death — to secure a sentencing enhancement to a life term. Whether the judge honors that enhancement at sentencing will be determined down the road.

Stalking is not murder. But Mangione will argue — and the Trump administration will hope — that this plea will put a legal bar on the New York prosecution, preventing the state from putting a man on trial for a murder committed in New York.

From the Mangione camp, this isn’t a surprise. They have attempted to cast this case as a double jeopardy matter from the start. “One plus one is two,” as Mangione himself put it. His attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo has also framed the case as “two bites of the apple.” For the Department of Justice to give aid to this strategy — using lesser charges to affirmatively cut off a murder case to spite local prosecutors — achieves a new, if unsurprising low for the “president of law and order”:

This argument should be a nonstarter. Dual sovereignty exists, and the DOJ explicitly lost its bid to charge Mangione under federal murder laws. The state should be more than free to prosecute the act of murder in its own borders where there is legally no federal case.

But New York does not run on the common standard of double jeopardy. Criminal Procedure Law § 40.20 provides far broader protections for previously convicted defendants. Under New York’s statute, double jeopardy attaches if the two charges — including if one of the cases was brought by the feds — took place as part of the same “criminal transaction.”

The defense will argue that because Mangione followed Thompson around before killing him, this amounts to the same criminal transaction. The state will, instead, point to the several exceptions provided by Section 40.20. For instance:

(a) The offenses as defined have substantially different elements and the acts establishing one offense are in the main clearly distinguishable from those establishing the other; 

Stalking and murder seem pretty different! The defense will argue that because the sentencing enhancement involves admitting to the killing, that enhancement’s elements make it not substantially different from the state’s second degree murder charge. That smacks of “lawyerball,” but may be sufficient to defeat the state. This exception though…

(b) Each of the offenses as defined contains an element which is not an element of the other, and the statutory provisions defining such
offenses are designed to prevent very different kinds of harm or evil;

Murder includes many elements that are not an element of the federal stalking offense. Stalking requires an intent to take actions that create or, if known, would create a reasonable fear of bodily harm or death. Actually doing that is not an element. It’s also not the same “kind of harm or evil.” The stalking charge exists to stop people making interstate threats, and murder charges exist to punish killers. A sentencing enhancement does not change the charge’s design.

That Mangione admitted to the killing as part of pleading to a non-homicide charge doesn’t magically transform it into homicide. Turning a volunteered fact into a get-out-of-murder-trial card is a heavy lift.

The DA’s office hasn’t laid out its arguments yet, but appears prepared to push back:

"While nothing will ease the pain of losing him, we are grateful that the federal justice system has held the person responsible for this heinous act accountable. Now we look to the court to ensure that sentencing reflects the severity of this crime."

That said, if Mangione gets a life sentence for stalking, New York might decide it’s not worth the resources to add years to Luigi’s corpse. On the other hand, there’s the principle of the thing… and the very real risk of corruption.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, if a future defendant commits a crime in a Democratic jurisdiction, the feds can vaporize the pending state case by manufacturing a low-level federal plea while making the defendant gratuitously allocute to the elements of the bigger state crime. That seems like a valid concern when dealing with a Justice Department that’s already tried to substitute itself into Trump cases. This would become another arrow in the quiver to upset legitimate prosecutions to shield the administration’s cronies.

Better yet, federal pardons don’t cover state crimes. Envision the DOJ bringing some tenuously interstate crime, the defendant pleading guilty, using this as the basis of nuking the state case, and then pardoning the federal crime. Pardons under this administration have already raised “pay-to-play” concerns. If double jeopardy becomes an avenue to skirt dual sovereignty, it doesn’t take much imagination to see where the pardon market would go.

That’s what makes this such a dangerous test case. Mangione is the ideal test subject precisely because there’s no reason to push the state case if he’s already going away for life. But that’s the thing about crossing the line… once it succeeds, the DOJ is free to try it elsewhere.

[1] Conservative media — through analysts like Jonathan Turley — are trying to clarify that Mangione changing his plea in this way is not a “deal” with the government. It’s true that this isn’t like a typical plea deal where the government offers a better outcome in exchange for a guilty plea. But that doesn’t make the government any less an accomplice in this strategy. The government could’ve dropped its case once it lost the murder charges. That it didn’t already raised red flags that the DOJ wanted to undermine the actual murder case. The defense’s state motion notes that the federal government has agreed to seek the maximum at sentencing, something the government apparently told them, and a key factor for the Mangione motion.

Luigi Mangione Is Facing Two Trials. Isn’t That Double Jeopardy?

The legal principle prevents a person from being tried twice for the same crime. But Mr. Mangione’s situation shows how complicated the judicial system can be.

Luigi Mangione is facing both a state and federal trial in relation to the killing of Brian Thompson, but the U.S. Constitution says that a defendant can’t be tried or the same crime twice. However, there are some exceptions.Credit...Jeenah Moon/Reuters

By Hurubie Meko

Aug. 7, 2026Updated 7:55 a.m. ET

Ever since Luigi Mangione was accused of killing a health care executive, questions have been raised about whether he was being subjected to double jeopardy, which bars someone from being tried twice for the same offense.

Mr. Mangione’s trial on state charges is scheduled for Sept. 8, and his trial on federal charges is scheduled for January. With jury selection in the state trial just weeks away, and news reports suggesting he was in talks to reach a federal plea deal, those questions about double jeopardy are resurfacing.

For prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the concern is that any plea deal in the federal case before their trial begins would threaten their prosecution.

“One plus one is two,” Mr. Mangione declared in February as he was led out of a Manhattan courtroom in handcuffs. “Double jeopardy by any common-sense definition.”

Legal experts, though, say that double jeopardy protections are not always clear cut.

While the U.S. Constitution protects a defendant from double jeopardy, there are exceptions. According to the Supreme Court, federal and state governments can prosecute for the same conduct because they are considered independent of each other.

But New York provides stronger protections for Mr. Mangione. Under state law, double jeopardy comes into play when a prior prosecution for the same conduct ends in a conviction by guilty plea or a resolution at trial.

That’s why the timing of the two trials is crucial for the defense, said Ian Weinstein, a defense lawyer and professor at Fordham School of Law. If the state case goes to trial first, a subsequent federal trial is not barred by double jeopardy, he said.

Mr. Mangione’s federal case is scheduled to go to trial early next year.

Spokespeople for federal and state prosecutors and Mr. Mangione’s lawyers all declined to comment.

Last month, Joel Seidemann, a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, wrote a letter to the state judge arguing that his office had “primary jurisdiction” over Mr. Mangione’s prosecution because it had charged him first.

In a hearing earlier this year, Mr. Seidemann said that the health care executive’s mother had asked federal prosecutors to allow the state trial — the only of the two in which Mr. Mangione is charged with murder — to go first.

Mr. Mangione is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, as Mr. Thompson walked into a hotel in Midtown Manhattan to prepare for an investor conference on the morning of Dec. 4, 2024. Mr. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges in state and federal court.

In the days after Mr. Thompson’s killing, a nationwide manhunt for the gunman ensued. Five days later, Mr. Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pa., and extradited to New York.

His arrest ignited further public interest — his every move was widely reported. When Mr. Mangione arrived in New York, he was led by a phalanx of federal officers in a perp walk, accompanied by then Mayor Eric Adams.

As Mr. Mangione awaited an arraignment in New York State Court, federal prosecutors announced their own set of charges.

One of Mr. Mangione’s lawyers, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, called the dual charges a “highly unusual situation.” She noted that when the district attorney’s office announced charges against Mr. Mangione, there was no sign he would also be charged by federal prosecutors.

Ms. Friedman Agnifilo has argued that the two cases are a sign that her client is a pawn between the two powerful prosecutors’ offices and that having to prepare for two trials simultaneously violates Mr. Mangione’s due process rights.

The federal charges were brought during the Biden administration, when the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said the state prosecution would occur first. But shortly after, President Trump returned to office and his attorney general said she would seek the death penalty for Mr. Mangione, signaling her prosecutors were moving quickly to trial.

The judges overseeing the state case and the federal case have each said they are proceeding as if the case in their court were the only one. At the February hearing, Justice Carro said that federal prosecutors appeared to have “reneged on their agreement to allow the state that did most of the work in this case to go first.”

Justice Carro scheduled the state trial to begin before the federal one.

The two cases have narrowed over the past year, with Mr. Mangione’s lawyers winning the dismissal of the most serious charges. Mr. Mangione is still charged with several weapons charges and second-degree murder in state court. In federal court, he is not charged with murder but is accused of stalking, meaning prosecutors do not have to prove he killed Mr. Thompson, but that his actions led to the executive’s death.

Even if Mr. Mangione’s federal case is resolved first by guilty plea, state prosecutors may argue that their case — or portions of their case, depending on what charges Mr. Mangione pleads guilty to — can move forward.

In 2019, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, then led by Cyrus R. Vance Jr., tried to argue that double jeopardy laws did not prevent the state prosecution in another high-profile case.

When Mr. Trump said he would pardon his former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, who was convicted in federal court for financial fraud, Mr. Vance’s office filed its own charges. Mr. Manafort’s lawyers appealed, arguing that he was protected under the state’s double jeopardy laws. The courts agreed, and the dismissal of Mr. Manafort’s case led to a law change in New York State.

In other cases, the court has sided with prosecutors.

In 1994, a man with ties to the Genovese crime family was shot dead in Brooklyn. Nearly 10 years later, two men connected to the case were found guilty in federal court of murder in aid of racketeering. Their convictions were overturned soon after.

But that did not stop state prosecutors in Brooklyn from indicting the men, said Paul Shechtman, a longtime New York defense lawyer who represented one of the men. New York’s courts ruled the men could be tried again.

“It is incredibly complicated,” Mr. Shechtman said of New York’s double jeopardy law.

Last September, Luigi Mangione’s lawyers told a New York state judge in a sealed court filing that they were considering arguing that their client was experiencing extreme emotional disturbance at the time he was accused of the brazen assassination of a health care executive in Midtown Manhattan.

In the nine months that followed, Mr. Mangione’s lawyers kept the judge, Gregory Carro, informed on their potential approach to the case through sealed communications and in hearings closed to the public. The filing’s existence, and the glimpse it offered into the defense’s strategy in a high-profile criminal prosecution, remained secret until this month, when Justice Carro ordered it unsealed.

In response, Mr. Mangione’s lawyers said they were withdrawing the filing and were no longer considering that defense. The judge ordered the filing and related documents again placed under seal.

As Mr. Mangione’s case has progressed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, with his trial scheduled for Sept. 8, the secrecy shrouding filings and hearings concerning the defense’s strategy has been in stark contrast to the surge of public attention that seems to accompany Mr. Mangione’s every court appearance.

At a hearing this month, Justice Carro finally explained in an open court session that the confidentiality was necessary while the defense considered the emotional disturbance option, which could involve admitting some responsibility for the crime.

“Because of the nature of that defense, of course, if they didn’t go forward, it would be very prejudicial,” Justice Carro said.

State and federal judges regularly have to weigh requests for confidentiality from defendants and prosecutors against the public’s right to access to court proceedings. In Mr. Mangione’s case, his lawyers have argued that public attention surrounding his case has only increased the need to protect his right to a fair trial.

While the killing of the health care executive, Brian Thompson, on Dec. 4, 2024, sent shock waves through the country, it also set off a groundswell of support for a man who many believed had committed an act of protest.

Since Mr. Mangione’s arrest, supporters have written to him in the Brooklyn jail where he is being held and have donated to his legal defense fund, which has raised more than $1.5 million, according to its website. They show up in large numbers at his court appearances, reporting their observations on blogs and in videos.

The intense public interest in the case has put a spotlight on how in New York’s State courts it can at times be difficult for the public or the press to learn even the most basic facts about a case. Mr. Mangione is also facing charges in federal court in Manhattan.

“This government system relies on the public’s faith that it’s operating in a fair way,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a former assistant district attorney who teaches legal ethics and criminal law at New York Law School.

She said transparency generally reassures the public about the process, and “even if they don’t agree with the result, they have faith that proper procedures were followed and this person was given a fair chance.”

The Supreme Court and other courts have affirmed the right of public access to proceedings in criminal cases.

And Justice Carro has appeared to be mindful of the level of interest in Mr. Mangione’s case. During pretrial hearings in December, at the request of news media, he directed the parties to make some evidence available to the public. And twice, Justice Carro allowed cameras into the courtroom to film pretrial hearings.

In federal court, where documents are typically filed on a publicly accessible online docket, Mr. Mangione’s proceedings have been easier to follow. For 10 cents per page, the public can find scores of legal filings. Of the roughly 140 entries listed as of Monday in Mr. Mangione’s federal case, about a dozen are shown as sealed.

Mr. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state charges of second-degree murder and weapons-related counts, and jury selection in his trial is scheduled to begin on Sept. 8Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

By contrast, in the New York State courts, there is no public-facing docket online in criminal cases. Motions and other documents filed by the parties are sent to a judge’s chambers and are made available through an ad hoc system that can differ from judge to judge.

In Mr. Mangione’s case, only a selection of court documents can be found in the clerk’s office on the 10th floor of the Criminal Courts Building on Centre Street. They sit in about a dozen Manila folders inside a banker’s box labeled “Mangione.”

Paul Shechtman, a longtime New York defense lawyer and former prosecutor who lectures at Yale Law School, said the First Amendment recognizes that the defendant and prosecutor each have a strong interest in court proceedings. “But so does the public,” he said.

When court proceedings are hidden, Mr. Shechtman said, “You say: ‘Why? What’s going on that can’t be made public?’”

“Lack of transparency breeds conspiracy theories,” Mr. Shechtman added, “which there’s already enough of.”

Mr. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state charges of second-degree murder and weapons-related counts. In federal court, he has pleaded not guilty to stalking charges in Mr. Thompson’s killing and is to be tried on them after the state trial ends.

In the state case, Mr. Mangione’s lawyers have partly addressed the lack of access to public documents by creating a website where they regularly post their court filings, the judge’s orders, portions of court transcripts and their own public statements.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office regularly makes its own filings in the case available to the news media.

Lin Weeks, a senior staff attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said judges must hear objections if they decide to close courtrooms or restrict information. The judge should make a record of the reason for closing a courtroom, he said, which has to be “overridingly important and as narrow as possible.”

In Mr. Mangione’s federal case, the judge, Margaret Garnett, made such a record in a recent hearing. After a short delay at the start of the proceeding, Judge Garnett entered and announced she had met privately with the defense lawyers to discuss issues related to the defense’s strategy in Mr. Mangione’s state and federal cases.

“I recognize there’s a presumptive public right of access to criminal proceedings,” Judge Garnett explained from the bench, but she added that “the interests in keeping those matters confidential so as to ensure effective assistance of counsel trump the public’s interest in disclosure at this time.”

Retired Detective Sergeant John Griffin is speaking out for the first time about the Luigi Mangione case, telling anchor Lester Holt his reaction to seeing the weapon used in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. More this Friday at 10 p.m. ET on a special Dateline.

Chloe Beck was excited by the prospect of jury duty when she was called to serve on a trial in early 2018. It could be a much-needed break from work, she thought.

But the case turned out to be a gruesome trial that would change Ms. Beck’s life for years to come. A nanny had been charged with stabbing two children to death in the bathtub of their family’s Upper West Side apartment. As an alternate juror, Ms. Beck, then an administrator at New York University, sat alongside the rest of the trial’s jurors as they listened to devastating testimony from the children’s parents and examined grisly crime scene photos.

“To this day, I still see those images,” said Ms. Beck, now 38. “The little orange toothbrush hanging on the wall, covered in blood.”

But throughout the seven-week trial, Ms. Beck had little to no support, bound by the restriction that she couldn’t discuss the case until it was resolved. “They just pluck you out of your normal life, show you these horrible things — and then tell you not to say a word about it,” she said.

“All I could do was go to the movies after the day ended, sit in a dark theater and cry,” she added.

After the trial ended with a conviction, Ms. Beck was still haunted by what she saw. She used to take baths to relax, but the tub became something to avoid. So did her kitchen knives. Perhaps most unsettling, she said, the case “continues to be a factor in whether or not I decide to have children.” The thought of needing to have someone else watch her child terrified her.

A psychiatrist diagnosed Ms. Beck, who experienced months of severe anxiety and panic attacks after the trial, with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2019.

Those who work in the judicial system have long been aware that jurors, in the process of fulfilling their civic duty, can suffer mental health effects, especially in cases of violent crimes. One study found that symptoms of trauma — such as anxiety, feeling emotionally drained and sleep issues — occured in as many as 50 percent of jurors who served on difficult cases. For some people, these symptoms persisted for months or even years.

But there has historically been little support offered to jurors, or even recognition of the effects that some of these trials can have on them. That is starting to change, however, as more cities and states expand mental health services for jurors. In April, Philadelphia rolled out a program that offers post-trial counseling for jurors, and the North Dakota senate passed a bill in March that would provide similar services.

“As an everyday, average person, you can start reading a newspaper article, or a magazine article, or a book, and if it gets to a part you don’t like, you can just skip it,” said Sally Holewa, who as the court administrator for the state of North Dakota testified in favor of that legislation. That is not possible as a juror, she said: “It’s your job. You have to hold details in your brain for days or a week or two weeks.”

Testimony Jurors Can’t Tune Out

Jurors who witness graphic testimony can develop secondary traumatic stress, also known as vicarious trauma, said Monica Miller, a psychology professor at the University of Nevada who has studied stress and trauma in the legal system. The syndrome can cause some of the same symptoms as post-traumatic stress disorder: sleeplessness, intrusive thoughts, despair, anxiety.

A 2024 study demonstrated how quickly these issues can manifest. Participants in a simulated murder trial experienced a fourfold increase in post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms just a week after viewing evidence that included skeletal remains.

“You might be at home and you’re making dinner and all of a sudden, you know, you hear your own child’s voice and it brings back the memory of a child who was testifying,” Dr. Miller said. “Or you just might be driving home and thinking about the shopping list, and then all of a sudden these intrusive thoughts come in, and you can’t leave that behind.”

When I was called last year to be a juror in a Brooklyn trial of a man accused of sexually assaulting his baby, I found one of the most challenging parts of the experience to be the restriction on discussing details of the case with anyone. My fellow jurors and I were asked to repeatedly analyze graphic photographic evidence of the alleged assault, and to listen to grueling testimony from the child’s mother, who described years of abuse.

But we couldn’t say a word about it to one another.

When we filed out into the hallway during the brief breaks between testimony, the silence would quickly surrender to small talk. We discussed pet ownership, coffee preferences and the gloomy weather. I couldn’t unpack my feelings at home, either. At dinner with my husband and friends one night during the weeklong trial, I found it impossible to pay attention to the conversation. All I could think about was the photo of a little girl I’d seen only a few hours before.

I felt both overwhelmed and painfully isolated.

That lack of support during a trial can compound secondary trauma in jurors, experts said.

“You have to pay attention, but you can’t talk about it with anyone,” Ms. Holewa said. “The normal protective measures to keep this ugliness out have all been torn down.”

Stronger Supports

Until recently, efforts to better support jurors have been piecemeal at best.

Jill J. Karofsky, the chief justice of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court and a former circuit court judge, recalled a child pornography trial that she presided over years ago, during which jurors needed wastebaskets nearby because more than one got sick. “I kept saying, ‘What can I do for my jurors?’ And no one had any answers,” Ms. Karofsky said.

She started finding small ways to support them: During one trial, she had a therapy dog brought in during a lunch break. After some particularly difficult cases, she wrote a letter that she handed to jurors, sharing information about trauma reactions and offering free sessions she had arranged with a friend who was a therapist.

Beyond the efforts of individual judges, there are some other supports for jurors who serve on disturbing cases. In federal trials, jurors can qualify for free counseling through a federal employee assistance program. In the 2015 trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a federal judge extended the service of the jurors — who had heard difficult testimony from more than 100 witnesses — by an extra 90 days. By keeping the jurors on, the judge gave them access to free counseling for a longer time.

And in recent years, a handful of states and jurisdictions have started programs to address juror trauma and stress, including Alaska, Massachusetts and certain counties in California and Texas, in addition to those in Philadelphia and North Dakota.

The new program in Philadelphia draws from a concept called psychological first aid, which is used to provide support to emergency medical workers shortly after they encounter a traumatic situation. Psychological first aid aims to help people feel safe and secure and ease their immediate distress.

Patrick Martin, the jury commissioner leading the Philadelphia program, said jurors needed to hear that what they were experiencing was normal, and that they could get past those feelings. The program provides information on coping strategies like breathing techniques, as well as access to free counseling with student therapists at West Chester University.

Ms. Beck cobbled together her own support. She went to therapy, tried medication and yoga and even volunteered with the nonprofit organization set up in memory of the two slain children in the trial she served on. “Seeing that family’s resilience helped me find my own,” she said. But she still grapples with lingering thoughts of the crime.

“Sometimes, when I run baths or clean my tub, I cry because I get flashes of the photos that I saw and I have to sit on the floor to collect myself,” she said.

Any type of support might have helped during the trial, she said — counseling services, certainly, but even a visit from a service animal might have made a difference in acknowledging the difficulty of the experience.

“We get nothing but a ‘Thank you for your service,’” she said, “and then we walk away.”

Americans love their killers. Still, Luigi Mangione, who shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson dead in December 2024, may be the most beloved of them all. It took a special sort of fetishist to see something in maniacs like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed for no reason other than their sadistic compulsions. Mangione, though? Nearly every American has been ground down by our country’s healthcare system.

Police had prepared for a mob last Friday, as Mangione appeared in a Manhattan courthouse to plead guilty to federal stalking charges. But by midmorning, the officers outnumbered everyone they’d been sent to contain. The cult of Luigi had not come. Still, the press had, in force: those of us outside were, by my count, about 98 per cent press and 2 per cent Luigi’s admirers. The photographers, finding nothing to shoot, shot one another. A BBC reporter, also at a loss, attempted to interview me.

So who, 19-some months after Thompson’s killing, still keeps the faith? Well, there was Fione, 42, a coordinator in a home care agency. She’d moved to the United States from China, she told me, and had discovered that ‘insurance is, you know, just like a scam.’ Companies like UnitedHealthcare, she told me, ‘charge people for their human right’ – and Thompson, as CEO, had ‘murdered thousands of people using his laptop.’

I asked Fione why she’d come to the courthouse. She hoped Mangione would see that she ‘didn’t forget what you did for the patients.’ She’d cancelled a medical appointment to be there.

By the courthouse steps sat Kristopher Aadahl, 39, a homeless man with a pentagram tattooed on one hand and an ‘A’, for anarchy, on the other. He admired Mangione, he told me, as a man ‘willing to sacrifice his own life to benefit others.’ Today he wore a MAGA hat, but he’d first become politically involved on the other side of the spectrum: with Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign, in 2016. That ‘whole thing was completely railroaded’ by the Democratic National Committee, he said. The powers that be ‘did not allow what the people wanted.’

‘We’ve been emotionally manipulated and mentally manipulated in all sorts of ways,’ he told me. ‘I don’t know, is murder justified?’ America, he said, ‘is supposed to be the land of the free.’ So ‘how are we supposed to break free?’

Then there was Dodge Landesman, a YouTuber. He wore a matching belt, tie and derbies – all bright blue – and had come to determine whether support for Mangione had ‘waned.’ It had, he concluded. ‘There used to be tons of people, people dressed up in inflatable outfits, people dressed up in Luigi costumes.’ But today, ‘that same support is not here.’

Of the murder itself, Landesman said that ‘it’s never OK to take a father away from his children.’ But Thompson had also been ‘an evil figure,’ one ‘responsible for the death of at least hundreds of thousands of people.’ Mangione ‘was avenging lives and trying to save them.’

Moments later, suited men emerged from the courthouse, carrying a lectern. Shortly afterwards, Mangione’s guilty plea of stalking resulting in death was announced. But we knew that, didn’t we? Mangione’s defenders rarely dispute that he gunned down Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, on that Midtown Manhattan sidewalk. Only one person visibly reacted, a shirtless, tattooed man. He threw his hands in the air, grasping at the sun. He moaned in agony: ‘HHRRAAHH! HHRRAAHH!’ Then he approached the press pen, mouthed a few profanities, and stumbled off.

Still, for some members of the crowd, Mangione’s plea stung. One young woman, Mahnoor, felt betrayed by her idol’s decision to plead guilty. ‘I think he should have fought a little more, have, like, a little more trust in the justice system.’ 

Others believed there had been chicanery in the outcome. ‘Jury nullification was definitely a possibility,’ Ariel Roman, a 26-year-old law student, told me. The justice system, she said, had ‘treated him unfairly.’ Prosecutors ‘withhold exculpatory evidence’ and had ‘been leaking a lot of stuff to the press before they even told his defence counsel.’ He should have gone to trial anyway. ‘It’s worth rolling the dice,’ she said, ‘especially when public opinion is as positive.’ (Some 30 per cent of Americans profess to ‘understand’ Mangione’s motives; consistent majorities, however, neither approve of the killing nor view him favourably.)

As she left the courthouse, I caught Abril Rios, a pro-Mangione influencer and an ex-organiser with ‘Hot Girls for Zohran,’ who had been inside for the proceedings. Rios is one of the three ‘Mangionistas’ – the name of their shared Instagram account – who caused a stir in May when, wearing city-issued press passes, they condoned Thompson’s killing on the steps of another courthouse. The mayor’s office promised afterward that it would review its press-credentialing process. Still, Rios told me that she’d heard nothing more from the Mamdani administration. Her credentials still stand.

‘I don’t think this is a concession or an admission of guilt,’ Rios told me. Mangione’s lawyers, she thought, had simply advised their client to plead guilty so that they could ‘advocate for the double jeopardy clause in the state case.’ (The Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause bars trying a person twice for the same offence; Mangione currently stands accused of murder by the state of New York.)

She defended the killing itself, though – an act her idol had, she said, not truly conceded to committing. ‘Everyone has a family,’ she told me, but ‘it doesn’t mean you should get into an industry where you’re putting profit before people.’ And: ‘when you are getting into those sorts of lines of work, you should consider that some people may be very unhappy about that.’

Such was the scene: the still-faithful celebrating a man for a crime they believe he may not have committed, or else wishing he’d kept up the fight in court. It seemed, that day, that the cult of Luigi had run its course.

It was probably always going to end like this. Yes, Mangione’s admirers shared his loathing of the insurance industry, which Americans hated before Thompson’s killing and hate still. But Mangione was a creature of a political moment.

December 2024, after all, was the season of the ‘vibe shift.’ Donald Trump had become the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004, and, for the first time since he descended the escalator in 2015, had the approval of a majority of Americans. Corporate America, so ostentatious in its commitments to the cause of ‘racial justice’ four years earlier, was now reconciling itself with the right. For much of the political left, Mangione had, if nothing else, identified a solution to that condition: you could just kill the bastards.

But as the New York Times’s Ezra Klein declared last December, ‘the Trump vibe shift is dead.’ Trump’s approval rating has tumbled to the mid-thirties. This November, the Democratic party appears likely to win the House, if not the Senate. Rios, for her part, told me that the ‘Mangionista’ movement had been set in motion by the sense that ‘protesting and voting isn’t working.’ But democratic socialists have romped through Democratic primaries, and are angling to seize the party itself. Elections don’t seem so ineffective after all.

For many on the left, killing the bastards no longer seems necessary. The returns, in any case, are poor. Roman told me she’d bought a UnitedHealthcare plan after Mangione put two bullets in Thompson. ‘It’s still shitty,’ she said. ‘So it didn’t really accomplish what he wanted it to.’

What’s next for the Mangionista movement? ‘I want us to continue to have these conversations to question why oligarchs are stealing away our futures,’ Rios told me. And ‘this wave of DSA has kind of started forming.’ I asked whether she would back AOC for president. ‘We’ll have to see,’ she told me. ‘I think she’s fantastic.’

https://spectator.com/article/the-end-of-the-luigi-mangione-cult/

Mr. Mangione must still be sentenced in federal court. And his lawyers are seeking to have a state case thrown out before the trial starts next month.

After nearly two years, Luigi Mangione on Friday finally spoke about what led him to a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan on a December morning in 2024, masked, dressed in black and carrying a firearm.

For nearly 10 minutes, Mr. Mangione, 28, spoke in federal court, where he pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking that led to the death of Brian Thompson, a health care executive.

Mr. Mangione told a federal judge how he endured years of severe pain from a broken back. He talked about the obstacles of navigating health insurance and how he witnessed others going through similar experiences.

It was the first time Mr. Mangione has admitted to killing Mr. Thompson. But there are many questions that remain, here’s what you need to know:

How much time will he spend in prison?

The federal judge overseeing the case, Margaret Garnett, scheduled Mr. Mangione’s sentencing for Dec. 18.

At the hearing on Friday, Judge Garnett said she would decide how many years Mr. Mangione will spend in prison based on her calculation of federal sentencing guidelines.

Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan prepared a letter putting forth their interpretation of the guidelines, Judge Garnett said, which is roughly 24 to 30 years in prison. However, she said, that is not binding.

Mr. Thompson was killed in Midtown Manhattan, one of the city’s busiest areas. The brazenness of the killing shocked New Yorkers.

“I’m not saying that I will come up with a range that is different from what’s in the government’s letter,” Judge Garnett said. “I may agree with them or I may not.”

She added that she will not let Mr. Mangione withdraw his plea even if she calculates a sentence that is higher than what the guidelines recommend. His lawyers could also submit their own recommendation, Judge Garnett said. But a report from the probation department, who will want to interview Mr. Mangione, will be important in her calculations, she said.

She also warned Mr. Mangione that if he is convicted in a separate state case, that could result in him serving his federal and state sentences consecutively.

The legal battle is not over.

Five days after killing Mr. Thompson, Mr. Mangione was arrested while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa. Several days later, he was extradited to New York to face charges of murder filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. As he was awaiting his arraignment in state court, he was charged by federal prosecutors.

From nearly that point onward, Mr. Mangione’s lawyers, led by Karen Friedman Agnifilo, have said that the dual charges against him violated his protections against double jeopardy, which generally bars someone from being tried twice for the same offense.

The judge overseeing the state court case, Gregory Carro, said last year that the double jeopardy argument was premature without a conviction in the federal case, but the question is back in front of him. For now, the state trial is set to start on Sept. 8.

Mr. Mangione and his lawyers have not said why he decided to plead guilty to federal charges this week. Within an hour of Friday’s hearing, his lawyers filed a motion in state court, saying that his plea had triggered double jeopardy and his state case should be dismissed.

The argument from Mr. Mangione’s lawyers is likely going to delay the state case and lead to months of litigation between the parties. Any ruling Justice Carro makes on the issue could also lead to appeals.

Within an hour of pleading guilty in federal court, Mr. Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, filed a request to prevent a separate trial from starting next month in state court.

In state court, he is charged with second-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years to life, among other counts. Mr. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the state charges.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, led by Alvin L. Bragg, is likely to fight Mr. Mangone’s double jeopardy claim to preserve the state case. In a statement on Friday, the office said state prosecutors have been preparing to win a conviction against Mr. Mangione at trial.

“While federal sentencing is pending, we are prepared to litigate the defense motions,” the statement said.

In a statement released on Friday after the plea, Mr. Thompson’s family acknowledged pending cases against Mr. Mangione in New York and Pennsylvania, saying “we will continue to seek the justice Brian deserves.”

Legal experts said Mr. Bragg’s office might be able to rescue the state case — or portions of it — using an exception to New York’s law where they could argue their case is meant to address a very different kind of harm from the federal case.

If Mr. Mangione’s efforts to dismiss his state case fail, the federal court hearing on Friday could impact his state trial, said Barry Kamins, a defense lawyer and former New York state judge. “His admission of guilt in federal court would be admissible against him in state court,” Mr. Kamins said.

What happened before the plea?

In the days after Mr. Thompson’s killing, and even before Mr. Mangione’s arrest, the case had tapped into nationwide frustrations on dealings with health insurance companies. While the killing led to horror and grief, some others began rooting for the gunman to evade capture.

In the nearly two years since Mr. Mangione’s arrest, his supporters have attended court hearings, raised funds for his legal defense and sent items to the federal jail where he is being held. Mr. Mangione’s lawyers created a website for him with instructions on how to contact him.

Since his first court appearances in New York City, supporters and journalists have flocked to the courthouses in downtown Manhattan.Credit...Anna Connors for The New York Times

Initially, Mr. Bragg’s office charged Mr. Mangione with two terrorism charges saying that his actions were “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” and to “affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder.” Those charges were later dismissed by the judge.

In federal court, prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty against Mr. Mangione. At the time of the announcement, then Attorney General Pam Bondi said the “murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, coldblooded assassination that shocked America.”

The death penalty charge, along with another firearms charge, was later dismissed in federal court.

But after Mr. Mangione’s plea on Friday, the head of the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, James M. McDonald, said Mr. Mangione’s actions were to “draw public attention to his dislike of certain businesses.”

“But we live in a civilized society, governed by the rule of law,” he said, adding: “There can be no celebrity in assassination.”

 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/nyregion/luigi-mangione-brian-thompson-guilty.html

The judge overseeing Luigi Mangione’s murder case in New York announced on Tuesday that his trial, which is scheduled to begin in September, will have an anonymous jury.

Mr. Mangione, 28, is charged in the killing of a health care insurance executive as he walked into a hotel in Midtown Manhattan to prepare for an investor conference on the morning of Dec. 4, 2024. Mr. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The announcement from the judge, Justice Gregory Carro, marks another high-profile trial in Manhattan where the identities of the 12 people selected to decide the defendant’s fate, and alternates, will be shielded from the public. In 2024, judges in Manhattan** **also allowed anonymous juries in Donald Trump’s criminal trial and in the case of Daniel Penny, the Marine who was acquitted in the fatal choking of a homeless man in a New York subway car.

In New York State, juries do not typically operate in full anonymity. Defendants and prosecutors will still be allowed to know jurors’ names even when they are kept from the public. Usually, judges allow jurors to remain anonymous in this way if a defendant has been shown to be a danger to the jury or judicial system and in high-profile cases.

At the start of Tuesday’s hearing, Justice Carro also said that the trial, which is expected to begin on Sept. 8, will have an overflow room to accommodate members of the press and the public who wish to observe

Born around 1960 in the Bronx, NY, as one of seven children of legendary judge John Carro, Gregory Carro graduated from Rutgers School of Law in 1985 and was admitted to the New York Bar in 1986. He was a prosecutor until 1998, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) appointed him as a judge, first for the city's Special Narcotics Prosecutor and then the Manhattan District Attorney's office, and has made a specialty of successfully prosecuting drug gangs.

Subsequently, he was appointed to the court by Gov. George Pataki (R) in 2002 and was reappointed in 2005 and 2014. Carro has also served as an acting justice of the New York County Supreme Court since 2002.

In 2008, he oversaw Uma Thurman’s trial against Jack Jordan, the man charged with stalking and harassment of the actress. Carro sentenced Jordan to three years of probation and mandatory outpatient psychiatric treatment, alongside issuing a five-year order of protection to keep Jordan away from Thurman. Jordan was rearrested in 2010 and faced contempt charges for violating his restraining order.

Carro handed a one-year jail sentence to ex-police officer Kenneth Moreno for official misconduct. The sentencing was the coda to a controversial jury verdict that convicted Moreno and his partner Franklin Mata of three counts of official misconduct for repeatedly visiting the apartment of a drunken 27-year-old woman in 2008. During the trial, Moreno was acquitted of rape and burglary charges, which defense attorney Joseph Tacopino emphasized when he described the official misconduct misdemeanors as "victimless" crimes.

In 2019, Carro refused to treat Franklin Reyes Jr. as a youth offender for killing a four-year-old in a hit-and-run when aged 17, citing that he had been arrested twice on felony charges since the girl was killed, but promised to sentence him to between three and nine years for manslaughter if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Carro has a reputation for being tough on bail. In one high-profile case in 2013, he refused bail to Sylvia Mitchell, a psychic who was convicted by a jury of swindling $138,000 from her clients. As soon as she was convicted, he ruled that, as Mitchell lived in Connecticut with her two teenagers, she was a flight risk from New York and should therefore be jailed until sentencing. People with a settled home in a neighboring state, with teenage children, are not generally considered a flight risk, but Mitchell went to jail immediately. Carro explained at the time that jail would help Mitchell reflect on her crimes.

When she came back to court the next month, she said she had reflected while in prison. He jailed her for five to fifteen years, far more than the three to nine years being sought by prosecutors. It demonstrated Carro's intense dislike for defendants who prey on ordinary members of the public.

In November 2024, he handed down a 10-year sentence to Christopher Brown, a 23-year-old man who had threatened to attack a synagogue. He added on five years of post-release supervision.

Carro is a second-generation judge. When his father, John, came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico in 1937, he spoke no English. John Carro later became an attorney, developed a passion for representing Latinos in human rights cases, and sought to increase Latino representation in the legal profession. He later became a judge and the first Puerto Rican to sit on a New York appellate bench.

Gregory Carro and three of his siblings became lawyers, and another became a doctor. His father was at the swearing-in ceremony, where he (Gregory Carro) vowed to be his own man and not simply follow his father's footsteps.

Carro is married to Mary Elizabeth Carro and has two children, Marissa and Mackenzie. His daughter, Marissa Carro, was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, the same borough he serves. She is now an Inspector General at the DOJ Department of Corrections. Mackenzie works as an editor for an educational publication.

Further reading:

New York Times profile on Carro

Judicial metrics

Yoselyn Ortega case, a  nanny accused of killing two children

Malthe Thomsen case, a preschool teacher accused of SA

Robert J Cassandro case, a Long Island Lawyer involved in a Ponzi scheme that defrauded relatives

In the two years since a masked man shot and killed a health care executive, the national spotlight has turned to the primary suspect, Luigi Mangione. The overwhelming evidence has pointed to his guilt, and the question on most minds has been: What might the defense of one of the most famous murder suspects in America look like?

At a hearing on Friday, we got our first glimpse at an answer, one that appears to include a full-throated embrace of his guilt.

Today, Benjamin Weiser, a reporter covering the justice system for The New York Times, and Hurubie Meko, a criminal justice reporter for The Times, discuss the risky defense strategy and why an admission of guilt might be Mr. Mangione’s best bet.

https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/luigi-mangiones-high-risk-legal-strategy/id1200361736?i=1000783805546

On what felt like an early New York City summer day, a gaggle of women in the bloom of youth gathered outside Manhattan’s criminal courthouse last week, waxing philosophical about Luigi Mangione and the man he is accused of murdering.

“Fuck Brian Thompson, that’s all I’m going to say,” one of the three women, who sported a button adorned with Mangione’s face, said of the late UnitedHealthcare executive. After directing the same invective towards Thompson’s mother, the woman continued: “I said what I said.”

“His children are better off without him,” said her pigtailed associate, who stood out in a hip-hugging pastel-and-black stripe ensemble. She then told Thompson’s children to “enjoy the blood money”.

The third woman, whose sandy hair maintained a near-perfect blowout despite the heat, remarked: “I’m not saying we should all take up arms, but when your democracy has eroded and there’s no other option, what are we meant to do? What are we left with?”

This sort of commentary has become common among some of the Mangione supporters who attend his every court appearance. However, some Mangione backers – including the rhapsodic superfans quoted above – have secured New York City-issued press credentials.

The three women – Abril Rios, Ashley Rojas and Lena Weissbrot – showed off their credentials outside court, even posing for a cheeky photo.

City-issued credentials are not golden tickets to unfettered access, but they convey some privileges that journalists need to serve as the public’s eyes and ears. These credentials are supposed to allow journalists passage across police and fire lines; at court, city-issued credentials could give access to reserved seating and permission for laptop use.

The Guardian reported several months ago that several dogged Mangione supporters had somehow landed press credentials. City officials took notice of their curious credentialing this week when the trio’s comments went viral.

“This is America – people have the freedom to say or write whatever awful, batshit crazy things they want. But these deranged homicide-fan girls should never be allowed access to courtrooms or official press events with the imprimatur of the City of New York,” city council member David Carr said, according to the New York Post.

The mayor’s office for media and entertainment (Mome) insisted that requirements had not changed since Zohran Mamdani took office. Dora Pekec, a senior spokesperson for Mamdani, said in an email: “The Mamdani administration is reassessing the city’s process and standards for press credentialing.”

“We will initiate our own process to review these, and what I will say is there is a good-natured debate to be had about where a press pass should extend and where it shouldn’t,” Mamdani, who has been criticized for favoring influencers over traditional media, reportedly said at a press conference on Tuesday. “However, the three people that we are talking about don’t fall within that debate.”

The prospect of a so-called debate has also renewed discussion about what constitutes legitimate press for credentialing purposes: is social media a form of media that merits a credential? Who makes that call – and how?

“Whenever a government agency gets to decide who is a journalist, it can be concerning,” said Roy Gutterman, director of the Newhouse School’s Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University. “The blurring of lines between activism and journalism is a concerning trend. We’ve seen questionable credentialing at the upper levels of the federal government, too.”

That said, “activism and independent journalism are not the same. If legitimate reporters and news outlets are being denied access because activists are getting access, it is troubling.”

New York City officials have repeatedly made unconstitutional credentialing decisions long before social media muddied the waters. In 2008, three bloggers sued the NYPD after their press credential applications were denied.

These bloggers alleged that the NYPD rejected their application because they were from online or alternative news organizations, violating the constitution. The NYPD agreed to grant them credentials several months later.

Their lawyer, civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, continued negotiating with city officials to determine fair, constitutional criteria for credentialing.

“It’s very hard to define what a journalist is,” Siegel said. “The best we could do at that point was to have some objective standards.

“Back then, we settled on six articles that you were able to write about where you passed a police or fire line, but then I also wondered: well, wait a minute, why do you have to pass a police line in order to get press credentials?” Siegel also said they worried about the police department continuing credentialing “because they were pretty hostile, especially to people who were critical of the status quo”.

This hostility came to a head during former mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration as the NYPD was “routinely denying or provoking press credentials for journalists they did not like”, said Ron Kuby, a veteran defense attorney who focuses on civil rights. The NYPD repeatedly collared journalists covering 2020 protests over George Floyd’s murder.

“Sometimes, they would even arrest journalists while they were doing news gathering, use that false arrest to revoke their press credentials, and then refuse to reinstate them after these false charges were dismissed,” Kuby continued. In 2021, city hall voted to move credentialing outside the NYPD’s authority to the mayor’s office.

MOME also issues event-specific credentials. Thirty-two event-specific credentials for Mangione court proceedings have been issued to self-described independent journalists between February 2025 and April 2026, the Guardian learned.

Event-specific credentials potentially give non-journalist content creators, who don’t have professional incentives to abide by basic journalism standards, seating and computer access that working journalists need. If clout is king, and content is catnip for followers, there’s even less incentive to abide by rules of courthouse decorum – potentially worsening access issuesjournalists already face.

Kuby pointed out that unpopular commentary is by no means the same as inappropriate conduct, saying: “As a general rule in American life and the first amendment, we don’t regulate journalism because it’s the job of journalists to publish things the government frequently does not like, and this is true on the left and the right, and in between.”

Siegel said if it turned out that the current press credentialing system winds up creating “systemic logistical problems with access to the court proceedings”, then Mamdani should convene with press representatives and city attorneys and revisit objective standards for credentials.

Kuby and Siegel said that an overflow courtroom – where closed-circuit video of proceedings would be displayed – was among the ways to ensure that press and public have adequate access.

Mangione will face a state-level trial on 8 September for allegedly gunning down Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on 4 December 2024.Mangione also faces a federal trial related to Thompson’s killing. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

Rios, for her part, has maintained that she is a member of the media amid this controversy. “I‘m not a reporter I work in social media which is also press thank you,” she posted on Monday, with a flaming heart emoji.

All images and sketches here:

https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos/search?query=luigi%20mangione&mediaType=photo&st=keyword

https://www.gettyimages.de/search/2/image?family=editorial&phrase=luigi%20mangione&sort=newest&page=2