Luigie Mangione is escorted into Manhattan Criminal court for his arraignment in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Monday, Dec. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) — A judge on Wednesday granted Luigi Mangione only a slight delay of his federal trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, moving it from September to October instead of next year, as his lawyers had wanted.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett tied her decision to the schedule of Mangione’s state murder trial, which is set to begin June 8 and take four to six weeks. She rejected a defense request to postpone the federal case until January or February 2027 so that it could then seek to delay the state case until September.
Mangione’s lawyers had argued that back-to-back trials on a compressed timeline would violate his constitutional rights. However, Garnett said their proposal to push the federal case into 2027 and slot the state case in its place doesn’t “solve any of these problems because it shifts the very same problems from the summer to the fall.”
Jury selection in the federal case will begin on Oct. 5 instead of Sept. 8, followed by opening statements and testimony on Oct. 26 instead of Oct. 13, Garnett said. The schedule could change again if the state trial is delayed, she said.
Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty. He wore leg shackles as he entered the packed courtroom Wednesday and spoke only to confirm that he had agreed to let his lawyers speak to the judge about trial strategy and attorney-client matters in her robing room without him present. He faces the possibility of life in prison if he’s convicted in either case, which are set to occur two blocks apart in lower Manhattan.
“There really is no way around taking into account the events in the state case,” Garnett told lawyers at a hearing in Manhattan federal court. “Whether we like it or not, we’re at the mercy of the state case.”
However, Garnett said, “I am skeptical of moving the (federal) trial wholesale into 2027 when the state trial has not been adjourned. It is a little bit of a tail wagging the dog.”
Along with the new trial date, Garnett compressed preparations for jury selection in the federal case so that they don’t overlap with the state trial, giving Mangione more time to review questionnaires filled out by hundreds of potential jurors. The original schedule had been set when the death penalty was still on the table.
Federal prosecutors opposed a trial delay, arguing that witnesses are harder to locate and memories fade with the passage of time. At least one witness will be traveling from abroad, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dominic Gentile said.
“The public has a right to a speedy trial as well, especially in a case as significant as this,” Gentile said, noting that Mangione’s lawyers have had more than a year to prepare and that both cases involve the same allegations and witnesses.
The state trial judge, Gregory Carro, previously raised the possibility of moving the state trial to September — but only if federal prosecutors appealed Garnett’s decision barring them from seeking the death penalty. They declined to do so.
Garnett’s ruling on Wednesday leaves Carro little room to delay the state trial, and pushing it until after the federal trial could raise double jeopardy concerns.
The state’s double jeopardy protections kick in if a jury has been sworn in in a prior prosecution, such as a federal case, or if that prosecution ends in a guilty plea. The cases involve different charges but the same alleged course of conduct.
At a hearing in February, Mangione spoke out against the prospect of two trials, telling the judge: “It’s the same trial twice. One plus one is two. Double jeopardy by any commonsense definition.”
Thompson, 50, was killed on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind.
Police say the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used by critics to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.
His lawyers have argued that authorities prejudiced him by turning his arrest into a “Marvel movie” spectacle with armed officers parading him up a pier after he was flown to New York and by publicly declaring their desire to seek the death penalty before he was indicted.
In January, Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge — murder through use of a firearm — that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding it legally flawed.
The judge, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, also threw out a gun charge but left in place stalking charges that carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.
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