The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Friday opposed Luigi Mangione’s bid to dismiss his state murder case on double jeopardy grounds following his 11th-hour federal guilty plea, urging his trial in state court move forward for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Under New York law, a defendant cannot be tried twice for the same crime if the charges were designed to prevent the same kind of harm. Mangione’s lawyers have argued the dueling prosecutions in state and federal court brought after the fatal shooting of Thompson outside a Midtown hotel on Dec. 4, 2024, were based on charges ultimately addressing the same types of evil.
But in a 49-page filing, prosecutors argued that the stalking charges Mangione pleaded to in his federal case were intended to protect types of harm or evil different from the state homicide charges he faces from the office of Manhattan Distict Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“In a nutshell, the essence of federal stalking or cyberstalking has nothing to do with murder, and the essence of state murder has nothing to do with stalking or cyberstalking: different harms, different evils, different purposes, different crimes,” Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann wrote.
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg walks into a Manhattan Supreme Court courtroom for Harvey Weinstein’s sentencing Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
In their filing to state Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro, prosecutors said if he were inclined to dismiss the state case, he should do so without prejudice, which would leave the door open, should subsequent developments in the federal case yield an appeal following Mangione’s federal sentencing, which is set for Dec. 18.
Mangione’s unexpected guilty plea in the federal case on Aug. 14, in which he admitted to stalking the 50-year-old Thompson in the leadup to the exec’s killing, came just weeks before he was set to go on trial in the state case, throwing the latter into disarray.
Within minutes of the plea hearing ending, his attorneys Karen Friedman-Agnifilo and Marc Agnifilo filed the dismissal motion in state court, arguing New York State’s double jeopardy law had been triggered by the resolution of the federal case.
If the gambit succeeds, Mangione could get out of prison by age 60, or thereabouts. The federal stalking charges carry between 24 to 30.5 years under sentencing guidelines, though Manhattan Federal Court Judge Margaret Garnett is not bound by them.
Had he headed to trial in the state case and lost and then proceeded to his federal trial, Mangione would have risked back-to-back life sentences. New York’s double jeopardy law is more favorable to defendants than the much narrower federal double jeopardy clause, legal experts previously told the Daily News.
The News has reached out to Mangione’s lawyers for comment.