Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges in connection with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione said, as reported by CNBC. “I knew what I was doing was illegal.”
Following his plea, Mangione’s attorneys filed a motion arguing their client cannot be prosecuted for Thompson’s murder because of New York’s double jeopardy law. His plea may therefore allow him to see a dismissal of state murder charges.
Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett of the Southern District of New York dismissed two of the four federal counts against Mangione. One of the dismissed charges, murder through the use of a firearm, carried the death penalty. The other dismissed charge related to using a firearm during stalking.
Garnett wrote in the opinion that the “chief practical effect of the legal infirmities of Counts Three and Four, and this Court’s decision that they must be dismissed, is solely to foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury that will otherwise determine, at trial, whether to convict the Defendant for causing Brian Thompson’s death.”
“The analysis contained in the balance of this opinion may strike the average person—and indeed many lawyers and judges—as tortured and strange, and the result may seem contrary to our intuitions about the criminal law,” Garnett wrote, adding, “But it represents the Court’s committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case.”
Last year, a separate judge dropped terrorism charges against Mangione.
