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The Manhattan District Attorney’s office filed an 82-page document in their case against Luigi Mangione at the New York County Supreme Court on Wednesday. In the document they provided images of what they say are handwritten notes Mangione wrote in the months leading up to the assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione, 27, is currently facing federal, New York state and Pennsylvania state charges for allegedly murdering Thompson last December. In the federal case, the government is currently pursuing the death penalty.
“If ever there were an open and shut case pointing to the defendant’s guilt, this case is that case,” New York prosecutors say in their filing. “Simply put, one would be hard pressed to find a case with such overwhelming evidence of guilt as the identity of the murderer and the premeditated nature of the assassination.”
Prosecutors filed this as a response to Mangione’s team omnibus request that the court dismiss the indictment of murder and terrorism on account of this being “double jeopardy” because of the multiple prosecutions he’s facing. The prosecutors suggested that Mangione use the one million dollars his supporters raised for him to “hire new counsel” if the state and federal prosecutions were “too much” for his attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo to handle.
In the filing, the prosecutors used excerpts from a notebook they say Mangione used as a journal to plan Thompson’s murder. The notebook was allegedly found on Mangione when he was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days after the shooting. A letter addressed to the “Feds,” which has been previously shared widely — and controversially censored on Reddit – was also included in the filing. Friedman Agnifilo’s motion to dismiss also seeks to suppress this notebook and the firearm found on Mangione, which his team claims was found in a warrantless search of his backpack. Judge Gregory Carro will rule on these motions on June 26.
An entry from the notebook in question, dated Aug. 15, 2024, states the writer was in San Francisco for a month at the time. “I finally feel confident about what I will do,” the entry says. “The details are coming together. And I don’t feel any doubt about whether it’s right or justified. I’m glad — in a way — that I’ve procrastinated [because] it allowed me to learn more about UHC. [Indecipherable] would have been an unjustified catastrophe that would be perceived mostly as sick, but more importantly unhelpful. Would do nothing to spread awareness/improve people’s lives.”
The writer says they’ve been “feeling foggy” and cannot write with “speed, clarity and confidence” but that they want to write their ideas down. “The target is insurance, it checks every box.”
An entry on Oct. 22, 2024 calls the upcoming investor conference a “windfall” and says it “embodies everything wrong with our health system.”
“Most importantly — the message becomes self-evident,” reads the entry. “The problem with most revolutionary acts is that the message is lost on normies.”
The writer goes on to say “Ted K.”, presumably the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, made some “good points on the future of humanity, but to make his point he indiscriminately mailbombs innocents.”
“By committing indiscriminate atrocities — he becomes a monster, which makes his ideas those of a monster, no matter how true. He crosses the line from revolutionary anarchist to terrorist — the worst thing a person can be.” As the entry continues, the writer talks about how rebelling against the “deadly, greed-fueled health insurance cartel” shouldn’t involve bombing the headquarters because that might make it seem like “the unjustified anger of someone who simply got sick/had bad luck and took their frustration out on the insurance industry, while recklessly endangering countless employees.”
The notebook entry states that, instead, killing “the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention” would make the point “self-evident.” The writer even suggests a headline for the news, “Insurance CEO killed at annual investors conference” and says that when the public learns about investment bankers meeting to “extract human life force for money” the discourse can “focus on greed, on the event through reasonable acceptable discussion.” The entry also says the hit is a “real blow to the company financials.”
In the filing, prosecutors argue that the terrorism charges against Mangione are appropriate because they claim his intent was to “violently broadcast a social and political message to the public at large.”
Earlier in the week, Mangione’s defense team filed a request that his bulletproof vest and hand shackles be removed while seated at the defense table at his next state court appearance on June 26, as they could influence the public to see him as guilty. They have not requested that his legs be unshackled, as a compromise.
“The authorities — both state and federal — have already prejudiced Mr. Mangione in the media more than virtually any defendant in recent memory,” writes Mangione’s legal team, saying authorities are perpetuating “a false narrative that Mr. Mangione is an unusual danger requiring extraordinary security measures.”
Mangione’s lawyers say they visit him nearly daily in a large open room, where he is unshackled and among dozens of people including young children visiting other inmates. They say he has never been cited for misconduct while incarcerated, is in the general population at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center and has been assigned to work detail.
Additionally, his lawyers urged Judge Gregory Carro to allow Mangione to appear without the bulletproof vest he was required to wear at his February 21 state court appearance.
“To counsel’s knowledge, there have been no threats to Mr. Mangione’s safety,” writes his legal team, adding, “and the only one wishing to execute him is the federal government.”
