Luigi Mangione Pleads Not Guilty to Federal Murder and Stalking Charges

NEW YORK CITY — Luigi Mangione stood before U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett in Lower Manhattan on Friday afternoon and entered a plea of not guilty to the four federal charges against him, formally moving a case in which prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty toward trial.

The April 25 arraignment began at 1 p.m. in the Southern District of New York, eight days after a federal grand jury returned the indictment. At the prosecution table were Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dominic Gentile, Jun Xiang, Alexandra Messiter and Thomas John Wright, joined by FBI Special Agent Thomas Ford. Mangione sat with a defense team that included Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo, Avraham Moskowitz and Jacob Kaplan.

Mangione appeared in a tan jail uniform. As he entered the courtroom, he smiled and gestured while speaking with his attorneys, according to courtroom reporting from the hearing. When Garnett addressed him directly, his answers were brief and clear.

Before taking up the indictment, Garnett addressed her own history with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and several attorneys involved in the case. She disclosed her previous positions as an assistant U.S. attorney and later deputy U.S. attorney in the Southern District, as well as her professional familiarity with members of the defense team. Neither prosecutors nor the defense identified a reason for her to recuse herself.

The proceeding then turned to the purpose that had brought Mangione back into federal court.

The indictment charges him with stalking through interstate travel, stalking through the use of interstate facilities, murder through the use of a firearm, and using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. The final firearm allegation includes allegations that the weapon was brandished and discharged and equipped with a silencer.

Garnett asked Mangione to stand.

“Have you seen a copy of the federal indictment against you?” she asked.

“I have,” Mangione answered.

He confirmed that he had enough time to discuss the indictment with his attorneys. When Garnett offered to read the charges aloud, Mangione waived the public reading.

“And how do you wish to plead today?” the judge asked.

“Not guilty,” Mangione said.

Garnett thanked him and told him he could sit down.

The plea was the first Mangione had entered to the federal indictment. The case carries consequences distinct from the parallel prosecution underway in New York state court: federal prosecutors have formally notified the court that they intend to seek capital punishment. The Justice Department filed that notice the evening before the arraignment.

From there, the hearing became a detailed discussion of how one of the country's most closely watched criminal prosecutions would move forward.

Mangione had already been detained on consent following his first appearance in the district on Dec. 19, 2024. Garnett told the defense that any renewed bail application could be submitted directly to her. Prosecutors also told the court that, at that point, they did not anticipate seeking a superseding indictment adding defendants or charges.

A significant portion of the proceeding concerned the volume of evidence now moving between prosecutors and the defense.

Gentile told Garnett that the government possessed approximately one terabyte of data. He divided the material into several broad categories: returns from grand-jury subpoenas issued to social-media, financial and telephone companies; search-warrant returns involving sources including Google Drive, iCloud and historical cell-site information; law-enforcement material from the NYPD, FBI and Pennsylvania prosecutors; and a roughly one-terabyte collection obtained from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, some of it overlapping with the other evidence.

The government said it expected to begin producing that material to the defense within two to three weeks. Garnett imposed a firm deadline: everything then in the government's possession was to be turned over by May 27.

The judge also asked what expert testimony prosecutors expected at an eventual guilt-phase trial. Gentile identified at least a medical examiner, with possible testimony from cell-site and telephone-company experts. The defense said it was not yet prepared to identify what expert testimony it might present.

The existence of two simultaneous prosecutions — one federal and one brought by the Manhattan District Attorney — quickly emerged as another issue.

Gentile told the court that prosecutors expected the cases to proceed in their ordinary course and believed the state prosecution would most likely reach trial first. Karen Friedman Agnifilo said the defense would ask for the opposite.

She told Garnett that the defense understood there had previously been a “handshake deal” under which the Manhattan case would proceed first. But now that federal prosecutors were seeking Mangione's execution, she said, the defense intended to ask that the federal case take precedence.

The issue was not merely scheduling, she told the judge. The defense anticipated raising constitutional concerns if Mangione were required to stand trial in state court before facing the federal capital prosecution.

Garnett did not decide which prosecution would ultimately go first. Instead, she instructed the parties to move ahead with the federal case without building their schedule around the state proceedings.

Her intention, she said, was to manage the case “as if it's the only case” unless circumstances later required otherwise.

The defense will also get another opportunity to challenge the government's pursuit of the death penalty.

An earlier defense motion concerning capital punishment had been overtaken by two developments: the grand jury's indictment and the government's formal notice that it intended to seek a death sentence. Garnett denied the earlier motion as moot without prejudice, allowing Mangione's attorneys to renew those arguments in a new filing addressing both the government's pre-indictment conduct and its death-penalty notice.

After Mangione and his attorneys conferred at the defense table, Friedman Agnifilo asked for until the end of June to file that motion. Garnett set June 27 as the deadline.

Later in the hearing, Friedman Agnifilo raised a separate issue involving Mangione's communications from federal custody.

She told Garnett that the defense had been informed that state prosecutors had received recordings of Mangione's jail telephone calls and that a call between Mangione and Friedman Agnifilo herself had been listened to inadvertently. She characterized the situation as “eavesdropping” and asked the federal court to ensure that Mangione could communicate privately with his attorneys. These were representations made by the defense in court, not findings by Garnett about what had occurred.

Gentile said the issue was new to the federal prosecution team and agreed to investigate. Garnett directed the government to make sure Mangione had access to a line segregated from calls available to prosecutors and to determine whether any attorney communications already produced had been isolated from the prosecution team.

Before bringing the proceeding to a close, Garnett addressed another subject directly: public statements about the case.

Citing the local rule governing extrajudicial commentary, she reminded attorneys that public remarks could affect Mangione's right to a fair trial and the court's ability to seat an impartial jury. She specifically directed prosecutors to convey that warning to U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton and asked that it also be relayed to Attorney General Pam Bondi and her subordinates at the Justice Department.

The court then turned to the Speedy Trial Act. Prosecutors asked to exclude the period through Dec. 5, 2025, allowing time for the enormous discovery production, defense review and extensive pretrial litigation. The defense agreed.

Garnett granted the exclusion, finding that the time was necessary for discovery and motions involving the death penalty, the indictment and potential Fourth and Fifth Amendment suppression questions.

With nothing further from either side, the judge ended the hearing.

“The defendant will remain in custody,” Garnett said, “and I will see you all on December 5.”

The case was adjourned.