The accused killer of Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson, is not the only 20-something suspected assassin making a court appearance on Tuesday: Luigi Mangione will be back in court for the first time since April.

Mr. Mangione, the 27-year-old Ivy League graduate accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson, is scheduled to appear at Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday. 

The presiding judge, Gregory Carro, is expected to rule on a number of defense motions, such as the request to suppress certain key pieces of evidence, like an alleged manifesto and a ghost gun found during Mr. Mangione’s arrest last year. Defense attorneys have argued that this evidence was obtained unlawfully.     

The judge could set a trial date for the high-profile New York state case or decide to let federal prosecutors try their case first as Mr. Mangione is also facing murder charges — for the same crime — from the Department of Justice. 

In fact, Mr. Mangione faces a total of 20 counts across two state courts, in New York and in Pennsylvania, and one federal court at the Southern District of New York, where federal prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty, all linked to the shooting of Thompso

n. The defendant has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his defense team is now combating the myriad of charges in three separate jurisdictions, as prosecutors jostle for position in the high-profile case.    

The shooting of Thompson outside of a Hilton hotel at Midtown Manhattan in the early morning hours of December 4, 2024, shocked the nation. The 50-year old father of two who was CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the biggest health insurance company in the country, was walking to an investor conference at the Hilton when a figure wearing a hooded sweatshirt approached him from behind, drew what detectives say was a homemade ghost gun equipped with a homemade ghost silencer, and shot Thompson “once in the back and once in the leg from point blank range, thereby killing him,” court filings detail. Emergency responders pronounced Thompson dead at the hospital. 

The suspect fled immediately. After a five-day manhunt, law enforcement arrested Mr. Mangione at a McDonald’s at Altoona, Pennsylvania. The young tech enthusiast who comes from an influential real estate family at Towson, Maryland, and was his high school’s valedictorian before earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania, matched the surveillance photos of the alleged killer that had been circulated on national media and flooded the internet. A customer at McDonald’s had recognized Mr. Mangione, who had removed his face mask to eat, and alerted an employee, who then called the police. 

In late December, Mr. Mangione was extradited to New York from Pennsylvania under enormous security. He is being held in federal custody at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he has been reported to be working as a jail orderly, cleaning showers and restrooms. 

Last week, the Blair County District Attorney’s Office in Pennsylvania asked the U.S. Marshals Service to release Mr. Mangione to the Blair County Sheriff’s Department on November 7, so he can appear for a pretrial motion hearing before the Blair County court. The marshals, which have the right to deny the request, have yet to respond. 

When Mr. Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania, he showed police officers a fake New Jersey drivers’ license. Prosecutors have charged him with forgery, carrying a firearm without a license, tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of a crime, and false identification to law enforcement. Despite pursuing the November hearing, though, Pennsylvania prosecutors have agreed to try their case after New York prosecutors have tried theirs. Yet which of the New York cases will go to trial first remains to be seen.      

In December 2024, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who brought the state charges, and Damian Williams, the outgoing, Biden-appointed United States Attorney in Manhattan, agreed that the state case would proceed first. And when Mr. Mangione was arraigned in federal court in April, the federal prosecutor at the hearing, Dominic Gentile, said he would stick to that agreement.  

But Mr. Mangione’s defense team disagrees with that set-up, arguing the federal case should come first because Mr. Mangione faces the death penalty in federal court. New York state does not have the death penalty.

President Trump has made it clear he intends to ramp up federal death penalty prosecutions and executions, after President Biden commuted the death sentences of all but three federal death row inmates to life in prison. As the Sun reported, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, in April released a statement saying she had “directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”

Mr. Mangione’s lead defense attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, intends to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty in her client’s case and has a September 19 deadline to file her motion.  

Ms. Agnifilo is the wife of Mark Agnifilo, who recently successfully defended the music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs in his federal sex-trackificking trial, sparing the rapper a possible sentence of life in prison by securing a not guilty verdict on the most serious charges. 

But fending off a death penalty charge presents its own complexities. Mr. Mangione’s attorneys are questioning the two “aggravating factors” — the intricate planning of the shooting and the risk of death to others — that federal prosecutors claim make Thompson’s murder a death-penalty offense. They have asked the government to provide an “informational outline” detailing the “theories and facts” behind these aggravating factors so the defense can properly prepare “for a potential penalty phase.” 

“The government stated that because the shooting is alleged to have occurred on a ‘public street in midtown Manhattan, directly adjacent to a major New York City hotel, during the early morning hours when people were commuting to work’ that is sufficient to justify the statutory aggravating factor of Grave Risk of Death to Additional Persons.” Ms. Agnifilo wrote in a recent court filing.   

She further argued, “Under this logic, the Government is suggesting that every shooting on the streets of Manhattan would satisfy this statutory factor which fails to narrow the type of cases in which the death penalty would be appropriate.” 

Federal prosecutors had pointed out that surveillance videos of the incident showed a female bystander “only a few feet from Thompson” and other bystanders “in close proximity” of the shooting, and that these innocent pedestrians had thus been at risk of getting shot as well. 

In a recent response, federal prosecutors also wrote that they have already turned over nearly 7 terabytes of evidence and that the law does not require them to provide more detailed information until closer to trial. 

The U.S. district judge who presides over the federal case, Margaret Garnett, has yet to rule on the request. When the parties appeared in her federal courtroom at Mr. Mangione’s arraignment last April, she seemed open to the possibility of bringing the federal trial first, saying she would  set a trial date for 2026 at the next hearing, which is scheduled for December. 

But the seasoned state prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seideman, who has been a senior trial counsel since 1989, reasons that his case should come first because it’s simpler and further along on the procedural ladder.  

The charges brought by the state of New York differ from the charges brought by the government. While the state alleges that the murder was an act of terrorism, the government accuses Mr. Mangione of stalking his victim. This has led the defense to argue that the two prosecutions “violate the double jeopardy clause and Mr. Mangione’s constitutional rights” because what he says in one courtroom could be used against him in the other. 

In their four-count indictment, federal prosecutors brought two gun-related charges — the charge “of using a firearm to commit murder” is the one that is death penalty eligible — and two counts of interstate stalking, alleging that the Maryland resident “meticulously planned the execution of Brian Thompson … tracked his whereabouts, and traveled from out of state to New York City, where the victim was scheduled to attend the company’s investor conference,” as stated on the Department of Justice’s website. 

Meanwhile, the Manhattan district attorney’s office entered an 11-count indictment, charging murder in the first degree “in furtherance of terrorism,” which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. 

The defense has argued that the terrorism charge is unwarranted because it applies to crimes against larger communities as a whole as opposed to a crime, they say, that was committed against a single individual.  

The terrorism charge is based on a handwritten document, an alleged manifesto, found on Mr. Mangione during his arrest, in which he allegedly expressed hostility toward the health insurance industry. The defense is asking the judge to prohibit the prosecution from using the manifesto as evidence during the trial, arguing that it was obtained unlawfully.  

Mr. Mangione, the defense lamented, was not read his Miranda rights when he was surrounded by officers at the McDonald’s at Altoona, nor did they provide a search warrant when they searched his backpack. 

Another key piece of evidence that the defense seeks to exclude for the same reasons is the ghost gun found in the backpack, which detectives said matches the bullets from the crime scene.  

Mr. Seideman insisted that the evidence was properly obtained. He also argued that Mr. Mangione did in fact commit an act of terrorism when he allegedly shot the CEO, and that he admitted it in his manifesto.     

“Defendant rejoiced that he could commit this assassination at the investor conference: he explained that the best way ‘to rebel against the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel’ was to ‘wack [sic] the CEO’ at such a conference,” Mr. Seideman wrote.

The full quote of the manifesto states: “So say, you want to rebel against the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel. Do you bomb the HQ? No. Boms [sic] = terrorism.” The manifesto then suggests that instead of bombing the headquarters, one should “wack [sic] the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted and it doesn’t risk innocents.” 

The presiding state judge should rule on the defense’s motions — to suppress some of the evidence, to dismiss the terrorism charges, as well as other requests — on Tuesday, and he may finally schedule the trial date, or agree to let federal prosecutors try their case first.

In Utah on Tuesday, Mr. Robinson, 22, will be making his first court appearance — in state court, where he’s expected to be charged with aggravated murder. It’s not clear yet if the federal government plans to charge him. Unlike New York, Utah has the death penalty.