The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is fighting back through his lawyers. They have requested the New York Supreme Court to suppress evidence in the case against him and ultimately have the charges dropped.
Luigi Mangione’s attorney, Karen Friedman Angifilo, argues that statements made by her client to Altoona, Pennsylvania police before his arrest on Dec. 9 should not be considered in the trial.
She alleges that two police officers found Mangione in a McDonald’s, where they detained him effectively by blocking the restaurant’s exit and interrogating him before formally arresting him and informing him of his rights.
Friedman Angifilo argues that such questioning violated her client’s Fifth Amendment rights, and thus, his statements made to those officers should be excluded from the trial.
Luigi Mangione is escorted from an NYPD helicopter in New York City on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. Mangione is accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
Police also found a small item “enclosed in cardboard and wrapped in tape.” Inside was a computer chip which was also taken as evidence.
Further, the motion seeks to ban the state “from eliciting lay non-eyewitness identification testimony at trial.” The state seeks plans to call NYPD Detective Oscar Diaz and Altoona police officers Joseph Detwiler and Tyler Frye to identify Mangione through surveillance footage based on their “familiarity with the defendant.”
“Here, the proposed witnesses are not eyewitnesses to the crime,” according to the motion. “Moreover, the witnesses had no interactions with Mr. Mangione prior to the video surveillance to make them ‘sufficiently familiar’ with Mr. Mangione.”
The defense also asked the court to dismiss the terrorism charges against Mangione, alleging that the grand jury that indicted him “failed to establish the required element that Mr. Mangione intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion or affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”
Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court for a status hearing in New York City on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. Mangione is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside of a Manhattan hotel last year. (Curtis Means/Pool)
Finally, Friedman Angifilo asked the state of New York to drop the entire case against her client, claiming that trying him at the state and federal levels concurrently constitutes double jeopardy and thus a violation of Mangione’s Fifth Amendment rights.
“This Court is all that stands between justice and Mr. Mangione being forced to stand trial against illegally obtained evidence, terrorism-related charges that have no application to the alleged shooting of one man and concurrent prosecutions that violate the Double Jeopardy Clause and his constitutional rights,” the motion concludes.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said they will respond in court filings of their own.
Mangione, 26, was also indicted in the Southern District of New York on federal charges of stalking and murdering Thompson, as well as using electronic communications, interstate travel and a firearm when he allegedly killed the healthcare insurance CEO.
Luigi Mangione departs the courtroom following his arraignment in New York City Criminal Court on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
He was also charged federally with one count of using a firearm to commit murder, one count of interstate stalking resulting in death, one count of stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death and one count of discharging a firearm that was equipped with a silencer in furtherance of a crime of violence.
Mangione is accused of ambushing Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel where UnitedHealthcare’s annual shareholder conference was being held on Dec. 4, 2024. Prosecutors believe the fatal shooting was meant to send a message to the healthcare insurance industry based on a manifesto found on the suspect when he was arrested days after Thompson’s murder.
He would face the death penalty if convicted.
Fox News Digital’s Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
