Lawyers for Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last December, asked a federal judge on Saturday to dismiss some criminal charges, including the only count on he could be eligible for the death penalty.
In a court filing, attorneys for Mangione said the death penalty must be dismissed because it does not meet the legal threshold.
Mangione’s legal team is also arguing that evidence, including a gun and ammunition, allegedly found in a backpack Mangione was carrying when he was arrested at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s should be suppressed at trial because the search occurred without a warrant.
They further claim that Mangione, 27, was not read his rights before he was questioned by law enforcement officers.
The suspected gunman has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges in the fatal shooting of Thompson on 4 December last year as he arrived at midtown Manhattan hotel.
The killing set off a multi-state manhunt for the shooter. Mangione allegedly rode a bike to Central Park before taking a taxi to a bus depot. He was picked up by police five days later at a McDonald’s more than 200 miles (320km) away in Altoona, Pennsylvania, following a tip.
Attorneys for Mangione last month asked that federal charges be dismissed because attorney general Pam Bondi had publicly called on federal prosecutors in New York to seek the death penalty, calling the killing of Thompson a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America”.
Federal prosecutors charged Mangione under a federal law on murders committed with firearms as part of other “crimes of violence”, but his defense lawyers claim that stalking – the only other crime charged – is not a crime of violence.
Last month, Judge Gregory Carro dismissed state terrorism charges against Mangione, saying that prosecutors had failed to provide evidence of intent to “intimidate and coerce a civilian population”.
The case has divided public opinion, with some seeing Thompson’s assassination as a justified act against an official representing and unjust healthcare system, and others seeing it as a cold-blooded murder by a suspect seeking public fame.
Examples of support for Mangione has led some to suggest it is in fact a manifestation of mass hybristophilia, or the romanticization of criminals.
Mangione is currently being held in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan detention center, reportedly in the same cell as convicted crypto-currency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
A public defense fund for Mangione has so far raised more than $1.3m. Sam Beard, spokesperson for Mangione’s December 4th Legal Committee, posted online that the legal authorities are attempting to make an example of Mangione in order “to intimidate and coerce the population into submitting to an unjustifiable system”.
