They were the two leading charges in the state case
New York judge Gregory Carro has shot down the terrorism charges against UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione, a decision that removes the top two charges from the state case.
The Associated Press reported that Carro maintained the second-degree murder charge against Mangione; however, the judge rejected Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s suggestion that Mangione killed Brian Thompson in December 2024 with the intent of inciting terror.
As a result, Mangione no longer faces a possible mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole, although under the murder charge, he still potentially faces 15 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Bragg cited entries from Mangione’s handwritten diary in pressing the terrorism charges, particularly entries that indicated Mangione’s support of the “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski and his desire to push back against what he described as “the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel.” Prosecutors said in a statement published by AP News that Mangione’s diary entries “convey one clear message: that the murder of Brian Thompson was intended to bring about revolutionary change to the healthcare industry.”
Carro wrote in his ruling that terrorism was “famously difficult to define” and criticized prosecutors’ emphasis on Mangione’s use of the phrase “revolutionary anarchism.”
“Not only does this stretch the import of a two-word phrase beyond what it can carry, but it ignores other, more explicit excerpts from defendant’s writings in which he states that his goal is to spread a ‘message’ and ‘win public support’ about ‘everything wrong with our health system’,” the judge wrote in a snippet of the decision published by AP News.
Carro added that New York state law does not label an act as terrorism just because it was driven by ideology.
“While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care 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,” the judge wrote in a snippet of the decision published by AP News.
Carro determined that evidence was insufficient to conclude that Mangione intended to influence government policy through intimidation or coercion. He also pointed out that Mangione hadn’t been charged with terrorism by federal prosecutors although the state law was modeled after the federal terrorism statute.
Bragg’s office indicated that they accepted the judge’s ruling and would continue to prosecute Mangione based on the nine other counts against him. Mangione’s lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, described the ruling as “the first of many” wins in a statement to TMZ.
Nonetheless, Carro also shot down arguments from Mangione’s side that the concurrent state and federal prosecutions breach double jeopardy protections shielding people from multiple trials for the same crime. The judge said that the conclusion was “premature” given that none of Mangione’s cases had been tried.
