Luigi Mangione is in New York to face federal stalking and murder charges
Luigi Mangione in a holding cell after being taken into custody on December 9 in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
At a court hearing in Pennsylvania on Thursday, Luigi Mangione abandoned his fight against extradition and agreed to let New York police fly him to Manhattan.
Mangione will now face federal charges of stalking, murder through the use of a firearm, and a related gun charge, according to the federal complaint.
A representative for the federal court in Manhattan said a hearing was scheduled for 2 p.m. before US Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker.
Mangione is also expected to be arraigned on the state murder charges before Justice Gregory Carro of the New York Supreme Court — a tough judge described as pro-prosecution by some lawyers — at a later time.
Former Manhattan prosecutors told B-17 his leaving Pennsylvania willingly — to face arraignment on first-degree-murder charges in the December 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — was a smart move.
Fighting extradition, a process that could take months, makes no sense in this case, they said, and could only hurt the 26-year-old former Ivy League student.
“I think Karen realizes fighting is a waste of time,” Michael Bachner, a lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor, told B-17 earlier this week, referring to Mangione’s new defense lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo.
Friedman Agnifilo, a former chief assistant attorney at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, is married to Marc Agnifilo, the attorney for Sean “Diddy” Combs in the rapper’s federal sex-trafficking case. Their Manhattan law firm, Agnifilo Intrater, is set to defend in both high-profile cases.
“She’s probably thought to herself, the evidence against my client is more than sufficient to lose an extradition hearing,” Bachner said. “So what is the benefit of having one?”
Attorneys want to be near their clients, not shuttling back and forth — as an extradition battle drags on — between New York and central Pennsylvania, where Mangione is being held without bail.
“You don’t want to be doing this from outside the jurisdiction,” without easy access to your colleagues and law office, Jeremy Saland, a former prosecutor now in private practice, said.
Luigi Mangione’s attorneys, Karen Friedman Agnifilo and her husband Marc Agnifilo declined to answer questions as they arrived at a federal court mobbed by reporters on Thursday.
Friedman Agnifilo did not respond to multiple requests for comment on her client’s charges or extradition.
For some defendants, there are good reasons to fight being dragged across state lines to face charges, former prosecutors told B-17.
“The benefit could be that you make them show their hand,” Ikiesha Al-Shabazz, a defense attorney, said. At an extradition hearing, prosecutors are asked to demonstrate probable cause that the person being extradited committed the crime.
“You get to see some of the evidence,” the former prosecutor said. “But this is the type of case where we pretty much know, from media reports, what the evidence will be.”
New York Police Department officials say that evidence includes a 9 mm 3D printed “ghost gun” that matches the shooting ballistics and a spiral notebook of his writings. Both the gun and the notebook were recovered from his backpack when he was arrested last week at an Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s following a five-day manhunt, police have said.
“What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention,” the handwritten note from the spiral notebook says, law-enforcement officials told The New York Times.
Thompson was fatally shot on the sidewalk outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan, where he was to speak at an investor meeting.
If Mangione had family in Pennsylvania, an extradition delay could have value, Al-Shabazz added — but that’s not the case, either. Mangione’s family is in Maryland, where they own a resort and country club.
“There’s no humanitarian issue, either, where you don’t want to be extradited to someplace where you won’t get a fair trial,” she said.
“These are the issues that you fight extradition over, but they’re not prevalent in this case,” she added. “So to fight extradition would only be to further delay the inevitable.”
Fighting for the sake of fighting could work against his interests down the road, as Mangione seeks favorable treatment from his judge and prosecutors, Al-Shabazz said.
“You want to cooperate,” Al-Shabazz, an adjunct law professor at St. John’s University School of Law, said. “You don’t want to make it harder for them to do their job for no reason if you’re going to turn around and ask them for a plea deal, right?”
The allegations against Mangione are now playing out in three different courts.
In New York state court, if convicted of the top charge of first-degree murder, Mangione faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. The top sentence under New York law would be life in prison without parole.
December 19, 2024: This story was updated to include information about Mangione’s federal charges and extradition.
