A New York state judge on Tuesday dismissed state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Judge Gregory Carro tossed charges of murder in the first degree as an act of terrorism and murder in the second degree against the suspect. The decision means that Mangione now faces 15 years to life in the state case, rather than the 25 years to life that he had been facing.
Carro declined to dismiss Mangione’s second-degree murder charge. The murder suspect still faces separate federal charges that carry a possible death penalty.
Prosecutors allege Mangione, heir to a wealthy Italian family with roots in Baltimore, shot and killed Thompson on the streets of Manhattan last December. The murder prompted a manhunt for the suspect, who managed to evade capture for five days. Authorities said they found him at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s with a backpack containing a gun that matched the murder weapon and a written manifesto expressing “hostility toward the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular.”
Prosecutors allege Mangione used a 3D-printed pistol and a silencer that was also 3D-printed to carry out the shooting.
Mangione is facing parallel state and federal cases from prosecutors. His defense team, led by attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo, has sought to have the state charges dismissed altogether, due to arguments that they are a violation of the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause.
Carro’s move to dismiss the state terrorism charges comes after Mangione was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury last December on 11 counts, including first-degree murder and second-degree murder as a crime of terrorism, along with other weapon and forgery charges.
The suspect returned to a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday for the first time in five months as the trial continues to play out.
The case has seen many twists and turns, including when federal prosecutors admitted in April that they had listened in to private conversations between Mangione and his defense team, which are in violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel and attorney-client privilege, and could threaten their case against Mangione.
Prosecutors initially denounced the claims. The government admitted a paralegal at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office inadvertently listened to a call between Mangione and Agnifilo, but alleged she stopped as soon as it became clear it was a lawyer on the other end of the line.
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However, the government’s lawyers later released an amended statement saying the paralegal listened to the entire call. In the letter announcing the update, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Jay Clayton, also revealed he was recused from handling the Mangione case.
“The earlier letter stated that a DANY paralegal recognized the call as an attorney-client communication and immediately stopped listening. In fact, the paralegal listened to the entire call, then subsequently informed DANY prosecutors about the identities of the people with whom the defendant spoke,” federal prosecutors wrote. “DANY thereafter handled the matter as described in our previous letter. Moreover, DANY notified defense counsel of these facts in an email, dated April 22, 2025, thus, counsel was aware of this information prior to arraignment.”