A Manhattan judge decided on Wednesday to push back Luigi Mangione’s federal murder trial a month to October, declining to fulfill the defense’s request to delay the trial until early next year.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, who presides over the Southern District of New York, said the federal trial will start with jury selection on Oct. 5 instead of Sept. 8 and opening statements will commence on Oct. 26 instead of Oct. 13. There’s a chance opening statements may begin on Nov. 2, she noted.
Garnett also said the federal trial could be postponed again if the New York state trial is delayed. The state trial is set to start on June 8 and could take up to four or six weeks.
The defense lawyers sought to delay the federal trial until January or February 2027 and the state trial until sometime in September. Their primary argument against having two back-to-back trials was that they would have little time to prepare for the federal case and, as a result, their client’s constitutional rights would be violated.
The Biden-appointed judge rejected the defense’s request to move the federal trial even further because the state trial has not been pushed back to a future date.
The New York state judge, Gregory Carro, previously considered moving the state trial to September but would only do so if federal prosecutors appealed Garnett’s ruling that blocked them from seeking the death penalty against the defendant. The Justice Department chose not to challenge the decision.
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Mangione pleaded not guilty to both federal and state charges that were brought against him following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. If convicted in either case, he faces life in prison. Mangione also faces charges in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested.
While issuing the January decision that ruled out the death penalty, Garnett dismissed a murder charge that came with capital punishment and a separate firearms charge. She found the murder charge legally flawed. However, the federal judge left in place two charges of interstate stalking.