PiPress publishes an AP carrued story.
NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione’s state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which was slated to begin Sept. 8, has been postponed indefinitely as his lawyers seek to have the case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds following his guilty plea last week to federal charges.
Judge Gregory Carro issued an order Monday canceling the trial and giving the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the state case, until Oct. 9 to respond to the defense’s double jeopardy claims. A hearing will be held on Dec. 10, Carro said, about a week before Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case.
Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to a pair of stalking charges and admitted trailing Thompson to UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference and gunning him down outside a Manhattan hotel in 2024. Federal prosecutors said they would seek life in prison when Mangione is sentenced Dec. 18, though federal sentencing guidelines call for a term of 24 to 30 years.
“On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione said.
Immediately after his plea, Mangione’s lawyers filed paperwork seeking to have the state case thrown out on double jeopardy and due process grounds. They described him as a “pawn in parallel prosecutions” and accused state and federal prosecutors of “trying to punish him twice for the exact conduct.”
Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case, which also carries the possibility of a life sentence.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement that it would fight efforts to end the state case, in part because Mangione’s federal sentence isn’t yet known.
Compared with federal law and that of other states, New York has uncommonly strong protections for defendants facing multiple prosecutions. A state prosecution can be barred if a federal case involving the same course of conduct or criminal transaction ends in a guilty plea or if a jury is sworn.
“The full range of conduct that comprises the stalking offense is coterminous with the conduct committed as part of the murder offense,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote in their double jeopardy filing.
[...] “They are all part of the same criminal incident or criminal transaction.”
Bragg’s office contends that the state charges, including murder and firearms offenses, involve different legal elements and criminal conduct. In a letter last month, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann objected to the possibility of a federal guilty plea wiping out the state case.
Any guilty plea, Seidemann wrote, “must account for the seriousness of defendant’s offenses” and for the state’s interests in prosecuting Mangione, “including the sanctity of life principle that underpins the state homicide charges.”
They, the state prosecutors, want their time in the bright lights of vilifying Mangione's conduct. They want the publicity. That's clear.
The Crabgrass opinion is the man shot was responsible for more death and suffering than Mangione, given how UnitedHealth operates. Wikipedia -
The perpetrator, initially described as a white man wearing a mask, fled the scene.[1] The words "delay", "deny", and "depose" were inscribed on the cartridge cases used during the shooting. Thompson had previously faced criticism for the company's rejection of insurance claims, and his family reported that he had received death threats.
Crabgrass is very much of the opinion that a fairer and more humane healthcare system would be provision by the government of uniform care, Medicare for All, with for-profit ghouls sidelined.
Or give the death ghouls extended coverage to sell and then deny, delay over that. That is an alternative view. Crabgrass favors turning all medical insurance people out into the street to find actual gainful employment instead of what they do now. And the government has size to quell over billing by the provider community, who clearly are not faultless in any real measure. They gouge, they string treatments along, they are for-profit also, (private equity ghouls love them), and that make-as-much-as-the-bean-counters reckon mentality, (the bean counters on the hospital first floors control access to care providers on the upper floors), with that being the root of evil in healthcare.
Under Medicare for All, holding a few deterrence prosecutions would rein in worse practices, since the bean counters and those providers are all pretty smart and could figure out you don't be too cute or you're next.
Sancity of profit, should have been in the prosecutor's quote at the end of the above excerpting. It's more truthful. The lawyers of course, know the truth but speak graciously..
UPDATE: Here. And the links it provides, e.g., here, saying in part:
The killing of Thompson, whose annual compensation package exceeded $10 million, drew instant, sardonic comment from some social media users.
Over time, in more recent Luigi news, that aspect of things has fallen out of favor, and is not mentioned.
It deserves continuing emphasis. It is truth. Greed is not good. Suboptimal outcomes are the offspring of greed. Running a claims department as a profit center is not good and honest risk shifting.