Mangione Disturbance Defense Poised to Turn Tables on Healthcare

Luigi Mangione’s emerging defense that he was so distraught it led him to kill an insurance company CEO opens the door for him to align with his rabid online fans who have justified the murder. It’s a risky convergence of the legal system and the social-media zeitgeist that’s set to make his September trial a combustible event as much about the healthcare system as it is about murder.

“Everything he knew or believed about the evils of the healthcare system can now come into evidence to explain his conduct,” said Ron Kuby, a veteran New York criminal defense attorney. “Any of Mangione’s horrific experiences with the healthcare system, everything he learned about the nature of the health insurance system, all of that can be used to help establish this defense.”

Mangione, 28, is the Ivy League grad accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson point-blank outside a Manhattan Hilton where the company was holding an investor conference. Thompson ran UnitedHealth Group‘s insurance arm.

While the murder has been broadly condemned, Mangione has also become a folk hero for those who say online or outside court that he expressed their rage at the health-care system. A website catalogs the fanmail he’s received. So-called “Mangionistas” told the New York Daily News that the murder was “heroic.”

Unlike other celebrity defendants with support — think Michael Jackson or O.J. Simpson — Mangione’s fans don’t say he’s innocent. They support him because they believe he’s not.

His lawyers said in court June 17 that they intend to pursue a defense of “extreme emotional disturbance.”

It’s not an insanity defense. Extreme emotional disturbance is a strategy particular to to New York that allows a jury to find a murder defendant guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter if the defendant proves he “acted under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance for which there was a reasonable explanation or excuse.”

In layman’s terms, it’s what Mangione’s most ardent supporters have said all along: Thompson’s killing was understandable given the circumstances.

“He can try to put the industry on trial to the extent he can link it to what was going on with him at the time,” said Cardozo Law professor Gary Galperin, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney.

To be sure, Mangione’s attorneys haven’t yet said exactly what they plan to argue caused his disturbance. “He could say he broke up with his girlfriend the day before and he was overcome with grief, but there would be a big disconnect there,” Galperin said.

Law students often learn about the defense —several states deploy variations on it — with a fact pattern in which a husband shoots the lover of a cheating wife. The argument that Mangione reasonably lost it because he was so upset about the alleged wrongdoing in the health-care system is a far cry from that precedent.

But the defense has worked. A Manhattan jury found multimillionaire pharmaceutical executive Gigi Jordan not guilty of murder after Jordan told jurors she poisoned her 8 year-old son out of fear his father would abuse him. Kuby was one of her attorneys.

“Without doctors examining her, without a diagnosis, she was able to convince the jury that she was suffering from extreme emotional distress,” Kuby said.

The government has already put Mangione’s alleged views on health insurance into issue, saying in court papers he wanted to spark “revolutionary change” by killing Thompson. Prosecutors allege that Mangione was carrying a diary that said “the target is insurance.”

The disturbance defense lets Mangione latch onto the same evidence, but spin it as a mitigating factor rather than a motive. “It’s an interesting way to turn that tide and try to sway jurors that hold those views,” said Jennifer Beidel, a litigator at Dykema and former New York federal prosecutor.

Of course, it could backfire. “We’ve all had claims denied or delayed, but do we become so overwrought that we lose control?” said Galperin. “That we all have shared experiences does not equate to shared reactions.”

Then there’s the question of how the defense and any statement Mangione makes could impact a subsequent federal trial. Mangione has pleaded not guilty in both the state and federal cases.

But at trial, the argument only has to work with one juror.

“You try to win the game you’re playing,” said Kuby, “and worry about tomorrow’s game later.”