Luigi Mangione has employed veteran former New York Metropolis prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo to defend him in opposition to homicide costs on Friday, in line with an announcement Friday evening from her legislation agency Agnifilo Intrater LLP.
Friedman Agnifilo served because the second-in-command within the Manhattan District Legal professional’s Workplace from 2014 to 2021 beneath former DA Cyrus Vance. A biography on her legislation agency web site says she performed a lead position in prosecuting “high-profile violent crime instances,” together with these involving psychological well being and chilly case homicides.
“Karen Friedman Agnifilo has a three-decade background in prison justice, litigation, and trials. Her follow focuses on prison protection in state and federal courts, leveraging her in depth expertise prosecuting critical violent crimes, together with complicated murder instances, from accusation to investigation to arrest and trial,” her biography says.
“Whereas serving within the Manhattan DA’s workplace, Ms. Friedman Agnifilo was additionally integral to creating the workplace’s Human Trafficking Unit, Hate Crimes Unit, Antiquities Trafficking Unit, Terrorism Unit, its Cybercrimes and Id Theft Bureau, in addition to engaged on the creation of Manhattan’s first Psychological Well being Courtroom,” the biography continued.
Friedman Agnifilo can also be a frequent tv information visitor and commentator and is a former authorized analyst for CNN.
She can also be the co-host of a weekly podcast on the Meidas Contact Community the place she discusses rising authorized points and litigation technique that routinely has half one million listeners per episode, in line with her biography. She can also be the authorized advisor for the tv present Legislation and Order.
Luigi Mangione, 26, a suspect within the New York Metropolis killing of UnitedHealthcare govt Brian Thompson, is escorted after an extradition listening to at Blair County Courtroom Home in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, Dec. 10, 2024.
Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
In the meantime, legislation enforcement sources have advised ABC Information that writings seized from Luigi Mangione point out he had been growing a fixation and rising malice towards UnitedHealthcare and allegedly speaking about harming its chief for months.
Among the entries within the pocket book seized from Mangione upon his arrest in Pennsylvania earlier this week had dates on them going again to mid-2024, the sources mentioned.
That fixation would ultimately evolve into an alleged plan to shoot that CEO, the sources mentioned.
Among the writings had been diary-style, documenting how he felt, what he did that day, and likewise documented a want to concentrate on his well being and himself, and discover his function, the sources mentioned.
Then, as time went on — as Mangione allegedly fell out of contact with family and friends and grew more and more remoted — a few of his writings indicated a deterioration in his pondering and frame of mind, illustrating a gradual construct in the direction of the alleged plan to kill UnitedHealthCare’s CEO at their “annual parasitic bean-counter conference,” sources mentioned.
A poster depicting Luigi Mangione hangs exterior the New York Hilton Midtown resort, in New York, Dec. 12, 2024. (AP Picture/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Mangione’s writings, obtained by ABC Information, claimed that the U.S. has the costliest well being care system on this planet, however ranks about No. 42 in life expectancy. He mentioned UnitedHealthcare “has grown and grown, however as our life expectancy? No the fact is, these [indecipherable] have merely gotten too highly effective, and so they proceed to abuse our nation for immense revenue.”
“I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it surely needed to be achieved,” he allegedly wrote. “Frankly, these parasites merely had it coming.”
Neither Mangione nor his mother and father obtained insurance coverage by way of UnitedHealthcare, in line with UnitedHealth Group.
Mangione, 26, is at the moment in custody at a Pennsylvania state jail after a decide denied bail on Tuesday.
