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NEW YORK – Luigi Mangione‘s lawyers urging a justice Thursday to propulsion retired his authorities execution charges successful the sidesplitting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing that the New York lawsuit and a parallel national decease punishment prosecution magnitude to treble jeopardy.
If that doesn’t happen, they privation coercion charges dismissed and prosecutors barred from utilizing grounds collected during Mangione’s apprehension past December, including a 9 mm handgun, ammunition and a notebook successful which authorities accidental helium described his intent to “wack” an security executive.
Mangione’s lawyers besides privation to exclude statements helium made to constabulary officers who took him into custody astatine a McDonald’s edifice successful Altoona, Pennsylvania, 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) westbound of New York City, aft a five-day search.
Among different things, prosecutors accidental the Ivy League postgraduate apologized to officers “for the inconvenience of the day,” and expressed interest for a McDonald’s worker who alerted them to his whereabouts, saying: “A batch of radical volition beryllium upset I was arrested.”
Thompson’s Dec. 4 sidesplitting extracurricular a Manhattan edifice “has led to a ineligible tug-of-war betwixt authorities and national prosecutors arsenic they combat for who controls the destiny of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione,” his lawyers, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan wrote successful a 57-page tribunal filing.
They called the dual authorities and national cases, positive a 3rd successful Pennsylvania involving weapon possession and different charges, “unprecedented prosecutorial one-upmanship." They said prosecutors ”are trying to get 2 bites astatine the pome to convict Mr. Mangione" of murder.
“Yet, contempt the gravest of consequences for Mr. Mangione, instrumentality enforcement has methodically and purposefully trampled his law rights,” his lawyers wrote. They allege officers questioned him without telling him helium had a close to stay soundless and searched his spot without a warrant.
The Manhattan territory attorney's bureau said it would respond successful tribunal papers.
The defense’s demands to extremity oregon bounds Mangione’s authorities lawsuit could preview his ineligible strategy for his national execution case, wherever prosecutors mean to question the decease penalty. The authorities charges transportation a maximum punishment of beingness successful prison.
Mangione, who turns 27 connected Tuesday, has pleaded not blameworthy successful some cases. He has been held successful a Brooklyn national jailhouse since authorities whisked him to New York by level and chopper aft his arrest.
Mangione is owed backmost successful tribunal for the authorities lawsuit connected June 26, erstwhile Judge Gregory Carro is expected to regularisation connected the dismissal request. He adjacent national tribunal day is Dec. 5, a time aft the one-year day of Thompson’s death. No proceedings day has been acceptable successful either case.
Prosecutors had said they expected the authorities lawsuit spell to proceedings first, but Friedman Agnifilo said past week that she wants the national lawsuit to instrumentality precedence due to the fact that it involves the decease penalty.
Along with seeking to disregard the authorities case, Mangione’s lawyers alternatively asked Carro to propulsion retired charges alleging helium killed “in furtherance of terrorism" and arsenic an enactment of terrorism. They reason determination are “absolutely nary facts to enactment this theory" and that charging him nether a post-9/11 coercion statute flouts the intent of lawmakers.
Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from down arsenic the enforcement arrived for UnitedHealthcare’s yearly capitalist conference. Police accidental “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were scrawled connected the ammunition, mimicking a operation commonly utilized to picture how insurers debar paying claims.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has said that the ambush “was a sidesplitting that was intended to evoke terror.”
Mangione’s national charges see execution done usage of a firearm, which carries the anticipation of the decease penalty, on with 2 counts of stalking and a firearms offense.
Last month, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she was directing Manhattan national prosecutors to question the decease punishment for the killing, calling it “an enactment of governmental violence” and a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”
The sidesplitting and ensuing hunt starring to Mangione’s apprehension rattled the concern assemblage portion galvanizing wellness security critics who rallied astir Mangione as a stand-in for frustrations implicit sum denials and hefty bills.
In their filing Thursday, Mangione’s lawyers argued that the conflicting theories of the authorities and national cases — intending to “intimidate oregon coerce a civilian population" vs. stalking a azygous idiosyncratic — has created a “legal quagmire” that makes it “legally and logistically intolerable to support against them simultaneously.”
"This concern is truthful constitutionally fraught that we are hard pressed to find precedent for specified an unprecedented situation," Mangione’s lawyers wrote.
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