▶ Watch Video: Luigi Mangione’s guilty plea sets up high-stakes courtroom conflict
Luigi Mangione’s New York state trial is being delayed.
The move comes after Mangione pleaded guilty last week to federal charges in the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
After he entered his guilty plea and admitted to killing Thompson, Mangione’s defense team filed a motion to dismiss his New York case, citing the state’s double jeopardy law. Double jeopardy is a clause within the Fifth Amendment that says people can’t be prosecuted twice for the same crime.
Monday, the judge said that the state trial has been delayed until Dec. 10, which will allow time for the prosecution and defense team to litigate the motion to dismiss. The judge asked prosecutors to respond to the defense’s motion to dismiss by Oct. 9, and the defense will then have until Oct. 30 to reply.
Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges of interstate stalking resulting in death and stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death. In his state trial, which had been set to start on Sept. 8, he’s facing second-degree murder, weapons and forgery charges. A prior first-degree murder charge was thrown out last year.
Legal experts have said the double jeopardy argument may be tricky since the charges involved are different. The Manhattan DA’s office previously said it has been “tirelessly preparing to pursue a trial conviction” and they were “prepared to litigate the defense motions [to dismiss].”
Ultimately, Justice Gregory Carro, who is presiding over the state case, will decide whether the double jeopardy clause applies.
New York’s state law on double jeopardy is widely seen as being more generous to defendants, according to CBS News contributor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles Jessica Levinson. The New York law says defendants can’t have successive prosecution for the same course of conduct and same acts, Levinson said last week.
“The defense is going to argue that the federal stalking charges and the state murder charges are based on the same set of conduct and the same set of facts,” Levinson said. “The prosecution is going to say, ‘But wait, there’s a carve-out in state law.’ And those exceptions deal with situations where the elements of the crimes, the elements of federal stalking versus the elements of the state murder charge, are substantially different.”
“They have a live argument. There is a vigorous double jeopardy statute in New York state. It’s very liberal. New York state does not let you retry somebody for the same activity. But there’s an argument here that the federal stalking charges are different than the New York state intentional murder charge. They have different elements. They have a different focus. I think that’s going to be a live legal argument and I’m interested to see how that plays out,” legal expert Rich Schoenstein previously said.
Mangione will be sentenced in his federal case on Dec. 18. He faces up to life in prison.