Judge Dismisses Death-Eligible Charges Against Luigi Mangione

NEW YORK CITY — The federal case against Luigi Mangione changed dramatically Friday morning before the defendant even entered the courtroom.

U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett dismissed the two most serious counts in Mangione’s federal indictment — including the only charge that made him eligible for execution — ruling that the stalking offenses prosecutors charged could not legally serve as the crimes of violence required to support the federal murder and firearms counts.

Mangione returned to the courtroom moments after the decision was issued, dressed in beige jail clothing over a maroon T-shirt.

The ruling eliminated Count Three, murder through the use of a firearm, and Count Four, the related firearms offense, leaving Mangione to face the two federal stalking counts. It also removed the death penalty from the federal case at the district-court level, although prosecutors had not yet decided whether they would appeal.

The result turned on the highly technical legal question Garnett had wrestled with in open court three weeks earlier: whether the stalking charges underlying the government's case qualify as “crimes of violence” under federal law.

Garnett concluded that they do not.

Federal law required the dismissed murder and weapons charges to be connected to another qualifying crime of violence. The problem for prosecutors, Garnett found, was that stalking does not necessarily require the intentional use of physical force. Because the offense can theoretically be committed without such force, it could not supply the legal predicate needed for Counts Three and Four.

The judge acknowledged how counterintuitive that conclusion might appear when applied to the conduct prosecutors have actually alleged against Mangione.

“No one could seriously question that this is violent criminal conduct,” Garnett wrote. But Supreme Court precedent, she explained, required her to conduct an analysis “totally divorced from the conduct at issue.”

In her 39-page decision, Garnett described the legal landscape as producing an “apparent absurdity.” The analysis, she acknowledged, could appear “tortured and strange” and contrary to ordinary intuitions about criminal law. But the question before her was not simply whether the alleged killing was violent. It was whether the specific federal statutes prosecutors selected satisfied the legal definition necessary to support the additional charges.

“The law must be the court’s only concern,” Garnett wrote.

The dismissal represented a major defeat for the federal government. Attorney General Pam Bondi had directed prosecutors to seek Mangione’s execution, but with Counts Three and Four gone, that punishment was no longer available in the case as it then stood.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dominic Gentile told Garnett that prosecutors were not prepared to say that morning whether the government would appeal. Garnett gave the U.S. Attorney’s Office until Feb. 27 to make that decision.

The dismissal did not end the federal prosecution. Mangione still faces the two stalking charges and, if convicted, could face life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He has pleaded not guilty.

And on another consequential question before the court, the defense lost.

Backpack evidence survives suppression challenge

In a separate ruling, Garnett rejected Mangione’s attempt to suppress the contents of the backpack police took into custody when he was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

The defense had argued that Altoona officers unlawfully searched the bag without a warrant and that evidence recovered from it — including what prosecutors identify as a 9-millimeter pistol, a silencer and journal entries — therefore could not be introduced at trial.

Garnett disagreed.

The judge concluded that the search was permissible under multiple exceptions to the warrant requirement. She found that Altoona police routinely search closed containers capable of holding dangerous objects, that police had probable cause to search, and that the contents of the backpack would ultimately have been discovered through a federal search warrant regardless.

That ruling means prosecutors may use the backpack evidence at the federal trial, including the alleged murder weapon and writings that the government contends amount to a confession.

The two rulings left each side with a significant result: Mangione's attorneys succeeded in dismantling the capital portion of the federal indictment, while prosecutors preserved evidence they are expected to rely upon heavily before a jury.

Federal trial set for the fall

With the death penalty removed, Garnett was also able to give the case a firmer trial schedule.

Jury selection will begin Sept. 8, 2026, and Garnett said opening statements will begin Oct. 13.

That schedule had previously depended in part on whether the prosecution remained a capital case. Death-penalty jury selection would have required a longer process and could have pushed the beginning of testimony into the winter.

A separate scheduling problem remains unresolved. Manhattan prosecutors are pursuing their own case against Mangione and have sought a July 1 state trial date, which would place that prosecution before the federal trial. Garnett said Friday that, for the moment, developments in state court would not change the schedule she had established for the federal case.

Mangione therefore left Friday’s proceeding facing a substantially different federal prosecution from the one that had brought him into the same courthouse months earlier.

The government can still pursue a case carrying the possibility of life imprisonment. It can still present the contents of the Altoona backpack. And prosecutors still have an opportunity to challenge Garnett’s dismissal on appeal.

But unless that ruling is overturned, the federal trial scheduled for this fall will not be a death-penalty trial.