Terrorism, death penalty, charges by NY and the feds: Your Mangione legal questions answered

The criminal case against the Ivy League graduate accused of shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City is charting a complex legal course.

Luigi Mangione faces a host of criminal charges in both state and federal court, including terroristic murder, stalking and illegal weapons possession. Gothamist spoke to legal experts about some of the biggest questions to emerge so far in the case.

Mangione has been charged in both state and federal court. How does that work?

While it doesn’t happen all the time, criminal defendants are sometimes charged in both state and federal court. Some examples include:

• Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd. He was convicted of murder in a Minnesota state court and later pleaded guilty to violating Floyd’s constitutional rights in federal court. He’s currently serving time in a federal prison.
• Payton Gendron, who pleaded guilty to state murder charges in the mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo. Federal prosecutors are now seeking the death penalty in a separate case.
• Grei Mendez, the Bronx woman who ran a day care where a toddler died of fentanyl poisoning. She pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges in federal court earlier this year, while a state case is ongoing in the Bronx.

When both federal and state prosecutors bring charges, either side could go first. The decision often hinges on the strength of the legal theory in each case, as well as which one is likely to move more quickly, said Gary Galperin, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office who’s now an adjunct professor at Cardozo School of Law.

For Mangione, acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim said, the state case is expected to proceed before the federal one. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg referred to the cases as “parallel matters” and said his office is in touch with its partners at different law enforcement agencies.

In state court, Mangione is accused of murder in furtherance of terrorism. What does that mean?

This stems from a New York state law that passed just weeks after 9/11 and that allows prosecutors to seek more serious punishments for people who commit acts of terrorism. If prosecutors find evidence that someone intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion,” they can accuse that person of terrorism.

Galperin, who prosecuted the first state terrorism trial in New York, said the charges are rarely used. But the Manhattan DA’s office has secured a couple recent terrorism convictions, including against a cleric accused of recruiting his students and followers to commit acts of terrorism on behalf of ISIS and against a woman accused of using cryptocurrency to support terrorist groups in Syria.

It’s particularly rare for someone to face a charge of first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, like Mangione does, according to data from the state Division of Criminal Justice Service. State data shows just three people have faced a top charge of first-degree murder as an act of terrorism since 2001.

One case that draws some parallels is that of James Harris Jackson, a white man from Baltimore accused of travelling to Manhattan to carry out an ideologically motivated killing. Prosecutors said he took a bus to New York City with a plan to kill Black people and fatally stabbed 66-year-old Timothy Caughman with a sword. Jackson pleaded guilty in 2019 to murder as terrorism and a hate crime, Gothamist reported at the time. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

In the state indictment, Mangione is also accused of second-degree murder as a crime of terrorism and another second-degree murder charge that doesn’t mention terrorism. Steve Wasserman, a retired public defender, said prosecutors may have brought the terrorism charges to pressure him to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

“It’s a bargaining chip. It’s to gain leverage in plea negotiations,” said Wasserman, who’s now an adjunct associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I think the realistic goal is to get a plea to second-degree murder.”

In federal court, prosecutors could seek the death penalty. Is that likely?

One of the charges Mangione faces in federal court, using a firearm to commit murder, carries a maximum sentence of death. Federal prosecutors haven’t said yet whether they’ll pursue the death penalty in this case. And even if a decision is made in the coming days, the path of the case could change once President-elect Donald Trump takes office and appoints a new U.S. attorney.

The federal government has continued to seek the death penalty in recent years, including in the Southern District of New York. In 2023, the U.S. Attorney tried to convince a federal jury to give the death sentence to Sayfullo Saipov, the ISIS supporter who drove into a crowd on the West Side Highway bike path, killing eight people and harming many others. A jury rejected that request, and he was sentenced to life in prison, instead.

David Patton, former attorney-in-chief of the Federal Defenders of New York, represented Saipov in this case, which he said centered on whether his client would be executed. He said one of a capital defender’s jobs is to convince jurors to pay attention to potentially mitigating factors from a defendant’s background.

“ The challenge is to keep the jurors open to the possibility that, however much anger or emotion they may feel about the offense, that death is not the answer — that life in prison and all that comes with that is a sufficient and more humane punishment, a more civilized punishment,” he said.

Patton said sympathy for Mangione is not a given in a federal courtroom in Manhattan. If prosecutors do seek the death penalty, only jurors who aren’t opposed to capital punishment will be chosen, which he said isn’t reflective of the general population in the area. And even though Mangione has received an outpouring of support online, the attorney said jurors won’t necessarily feel the same way after hearing all the evidence.

“ When jurors are listening to victims on a witness stand who are sitting 10 feet away from them and expressing a lot of very raw emotion, that's a very different dynamic than than news accounts or people sort of lobbying comments from afar on Twitter,” he said.