A judge has dismissed terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione, who is accused of murdering a US healthcare boss.
New York state judge Gregory Carro said there was no evidence that the killing of UnitedHealthcare (UHC) chief executive Brian Thompson amounted to a terrorist act.
However, he upheld prosecutors’ demand that the 27-year-old face second-degree murder charges – meaning there was malicious intent behind the killing but it was not premeditated.
Mangione has previously pleaded not guilty to multiple counts, including murder as an act of terrorism, over the killing of Mr Thompson.
The UHC boss was shot dead as he arrived for an investor conference at the New York Hilton Midtown on 4 December 2024.
Mangione was arrested five days later after he was spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles west of New York City.
In his written decision, the judge said that although the killing was not a case of ordinary street crime, it did not meet the threshold for terrorism under New York law.
“While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the healthcare industry generally, it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population’, and indeed, there was no evidence presented of such a goal,” Judge Carro wrote.
The terrorism charges carried a maximum sentence of life in prison.
However, as well as the case in New York state, Mangione is also facing separate federal murder charges, which could see him being sentenced to death if convicted. The federal case does not involve terrorism allegations.
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The suspect’s lawyers argued that the parallel prosecutions had created a “legal quagmire” and amounted to double jeopardy, although Judge Carro rejected the claim.
Further pretrial hearings, for both the federal and state cases, will be held in December.
Supporters of Mangione gathered outside the hearing. Pic: Reuters
US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in April that she had asked federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for “an act of political violence” and a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America”.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office quoted extensively from Mangione’s alleged handwritten diary in a court filing seeking to uphold his state murder charges.
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Can Luigi Mangione face the death penalty?
In the writings, prosecutors said, Mangione wrote about rebelling against “the deadly, greed-fuelled health insurance cartel” and said killing an industry executive “conveys a greedy bastard that had it coming”.
They added that the writings “convey one clear message: that the murder of Brian Thompson was intended to bring about revolutionary change to the healthcare industry”.
Content Source: news.sky.com