Why Luigi Mangione would be smart to ditch his extradition fight and just come to NY
Altoona Police Department via Getty Images
- Luigi Mangione may waive extradition to New York at a hearing in Pennsylvania Thursday.
- Former Manhattan prosecutors say it's a good move for him to abandon his weeklong extradition fight.
- Mangione gets no benefit waging a losing battle and needs to be close to his NY lawyer, they said.
At a court hearing in Pennsylvania on Thursday, Luigi Mangione is expected to abandon his more than weeklong fight against extradition and agree to let New York police drive him to Manhattan.
Leaving Pennsylvania willingly — to face arraignment on first-degree murder charges in the December 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — is the smarter move, former Manhattan prosecutors told Business Insider.
Fighting extradition, a process that could take months, makes no sense in this case and could only hurt Mangione, they said. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Tuesday that he expects the 26-year-old suspect will drop his extradition battle.
"I think Karen realizes fighting is a waste of time," said attorney and former Manhattan prosecutor Michael Bachner, referring to Mangione's new defense lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo.
Friedman Agnifilo, a former chief assistant attorney at the Manhattan district attorney's office, is married to Marc Agnifilo, attorney for Sean "Diddy" Combs' federal sex-trafficking case. Their Manhattan law firm, Agnifilo Intrater LLP, will defend both high-profile cases.
"She's probably thought to herself, the evidence against my client is more than sufficient to lose an extradition hearing," Bachner said. "So what is the benefit of having one?"
Attorneys want to be near their clients, not shuttling back and forth — as an extradition battle drags on — between New York and central Pennsylvania, where Mangione is being held without bail.
"You don't want to be doing this from outside the jurisdiction," without easy access to your colleagues and law office, said former prosecutor Jeremy Saland, now in private practice.
Friedman Agnifilo did not respond to a request for comment on the charges or her plans for extradition.
For some defendants, there are good reasons to fight being dragged across state lines to face charges, former prosecutors told Business Insider.
"The benefit could be that you make them show their hand," said defense attorney Ikiesha Al-Shabazz. At an extradition hearing, prosecutors are asked to demonstrate probable cause that the person being extradited committed the crime.
"You get to see some of the evidence," the former prosecutor said. "But this is the type of case where we pretty much know, from media reports, what the evidence will be."
NYPD officials say that evidence includes a 9-mm, 3-D printed "ghost gun" that matches the shooting ballistics, and a spiral notebook of his writings. Both gun and notebook were recovered from his backpack when he was arrested last week at an Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonalds following a five-day manhunt, police have said.
"What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention," the handwritten note from the spiral notebook reads, law enforcement officials told The New York Times.
Thompson was fatally shot on the sidewalk outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown, where he was to speak at an investors' meeting.
If Mangione had family in Pennsylvania, an extradition delay could have value, Al-Shabazz added — but that's not the case either. Mangione's family is in Maryland, where they own a resort and country club.
"There's no humanitarian issue either, where you don't want to be extradited to some place where you won't get a fair trial," she said.
"These are the issues that you fight extradition over, but they're not prevalent in this case," she added. "So to fight extradition would only be to further delay the inevitable."
Fighting for the sake of fighting could work against his interests down the road, as Mangione seeks favorable treatment from his judge and prosecutors, Al-Shabazz said.
"You want to cooperate," said Al-Shabazz, an adjunct law professor at St. John's Law School. "You don't want to make it harder for them to do their job for no reason if you're going to turn around and ask them for a plea deal, right?"
If convicted of the top charge of first-degree murder, Mangione faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. The top sentence under New York law would be life in prison without parole.