In a stunning reversal, Luigi Mangione‘s lawyers told a judge Thursday that he will no longer be asserting a psychiatric defense at his state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The retraction came just a day after Mangione’s lawyers told Judge Gregory Carro that they planned to pursue a defense involving claims that the 28-year-old Ivy League graduate was suffering from extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the Dec. 4, 2024, killing.
That seems surprising.
You only come back from this by firing your lawyers, hopefully that’s coming tomorrow.
Yeah… this seems like abundant justification for tossing his legal team. One of the following is true:
- they advised him very poorly, and then he (or they) realized how harmful that would be to his argument, but for some reason leaked their strategy before that realization
- they didn’t consult with him, but for some reason leaked their strategy
- somebody vibe-filed a motion
The whole “leaking their strategy” is kind of damning tbh. And also a bit surprising, because I was under the impression his legal team was pretty solid.
How do you say you did it without saying you did it….
I hope this is somehow a strategy I’m too ignorant of criminal law to understand.
There’s two basic strategies they could pursue.
One is to argue that there is not enough evidence to prove Luigi killed the guy, by poking holes in the evidence collection process and getting lots of the evidence thrown out due to sloppy police work.
The other is to admit that Luigi killed the guy, but try to argue that he was out of his mind and is not in fact a stone cold killer. If the jury accepts this defense then it reduces the maximum penalty by changing the charge from murder to manslaughter.
It had always appeared that the first strategy would be used. However the leak yesterday was that the second strategy would be used.
If they are not using the Insanity strategy, and then it was really really really really really really bad to leak that they might be using it. Because if you are trying to argue that he didn’t do it, or that there isn’t enough evidence that he did, it doesn’t look good to have previously discussed arguing why he did it.
A psychiatric defense is an affirmative defense. There’s lots of affirmative defenses for different reasons, but the main point of an affirmative defense is that you’re saying you did do it, but aren’t guilty because of X. Its essentially pleading guilty. The prosecutors job is then not to prove you did it, but that you aren’t crazy/acting in self defense/were entrapped, etc. The prosecutor was probably sitting happy not doing much thinking it’ll be an easy case to prove the person was of sound mind. Now they have to go back to rebuilding the case from the evidence that was legally submitted. Prove where he was at what time for weeks leading up to it, where he got everything, where he went after and how. It’s a shit load of work.
But Luigi was at my buddies house in Utah when it happened so there’s no way he could have done it. They need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he wasn’t there.
Hoping the same thing. But at the moment it seems sloppy and amateurish
???
His lawyer is being so unprofessional right now, I’m worried this is going to reflect poorly on him
Doesn’t matter his defense. Good luck to the prosecution finding 12 people that have never been shafted by insurance. Hell, good luck finding 1.
Take a look at the comments on the article site. The prosecution won’t have as hard a time as you might think.
This is exactly what it was. They know theyll never get a jury to convict so their best option to to try and scare him into some kind of deal. He needs new lawyers.
There’s no way the jurors won’t be compromised. On the off chance they can’t bribe all 12 they can certainly threaten them. There’s no way this kid is ever going to get a fair trial.
Yeah, they can definitely threaten the families if ten people
I mean, his best defense is he didn’t fucking do it.
eh… that depends on how hard the state and federal prosecution/courts are gonna finger-bang him.
which is probably a lot
seems like his lawyers triad to bluff the prosecutors with a new defense strategy, and they didn’t get any traction in pretrial motions, so they’ve dumped it.
this guy’s getting railroaded. no blame on the defense for testing out some ideas…
Agreed, they already got a miracle ruling that the backpack evidence found cannot be used.
He was at my house watching Lord of the Rings at the time, so I don’t see how he could have fucking done it.
Even without joke alibis, he clearly isn’t the shooter. He looks nothing like the pictures. Like, different bone structure and everything.
I hadn’t heard this before, you think this guy was like “I really want everyone to swoon over me, and will risk being prison pretty boy for clout!”
No, like, they grabbed a random person at the mcdonalds
And clearly planted evidence while illegally searching him.
Where did you see that?
The system doesn’t care. They need to prosecute someone for daring to kill one of the elites.
He was with me in New Zealand touring hobbiton and growing out his foot hair.
We were playing WoW at a LAN party, dozens of my friends saw him, it was an all nighter.
goddamn i love lotr
Me too. It’s why so many of us were watching it together.
I saw him going into your house from the ring cam across the street, so I don’t see how he could have fucking done it.
Me and some redditors looked at hours of footage and were able to follow the suspect south into jersey. Idk what the FUCK the FBI were doing in Pennsylvania harassing and planting evidence on my boy LUIGI.
Because at some point, they realized they weren’t actually going to be able to catch the person who did it.
If they didn’t arrest someone, they would have invited copycats.
They can’t let the public even consider that vigilante justice is possible. At all times, they must appear competent.
Based on what they were saying during the shooting investigation, they were truly stuck.
Whoever did it was Law Abiding Citizen-level meticulous. I don’t want to speculate too much, but one thing is clear:
There’s no chance in hell that, if they caught the real shooter, they would have found incriminating evidence on him, not unless he wanted them to for some reason.
They arrested someone to control the narrative.
There’s a truth we’re not allowed to acknowledge: violence has often been used throughout history as a response to disenfranchisement and injustice.
Many people in the modern world have been conditioned to believe that only the state can decide when violence is justified. In that sense, we’ve domesticated ourselves. Yet every individual remains capable of resistance, and powerful institutions are not infallible.
They are comfortable in their control, and the most dangerous thing this shooting did was remind people that we’re not powerless.
We just live in a state of learned helplessness.
He was hanging out with me at the time of the killing. He couldn’t have done it.
