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.
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.
Edit: IANAL, so idk, but would this sort of thing (your lawyer fucking up super bad) be grounds for moving for a mistrial?
Yes. I don’t think that’s going to happen in this case though.
I mean, his best defense is he didn’t fucking do it.
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.
The system doesn’t care. They need to prosecute someone for daring to kill one of the elites.
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.
Nah we were having breakfast at Joe’s Diner in Myrtle Beach, SC that morning
We were playing WoW at a LAN party, dozens of my friends saw him, it was an all nighter.
He was with me in New Zealand touring hobbiton and growing out his foot hair.
goddamn i love lotr
Me too. It’s why so many of us were watching it together.
He was hanging out with me at the time of the killing. He couldn’t have done it.
Agreed, they already got a miracle ruling that the backpack evidence found cannot be used.
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…
I hope this is somehow a strategy I’m too ignorant of criminal law to understand.
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.
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.
Hoping the same thing. But at the moment it seems sloppy and amateurish
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.
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.
???
His lawyer is being so unprofessional right now, I’m worried this is going to reflect poorly on him
How do you say you did it without saying you did it….
That seems surprising.
