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Mangione faces a possible maximum sentence of life in prison when he is sentenced.
Mangione’s plea came weeks before jury selection is scheduled to start for the New York state court trial in which he is charged with murdering Thompson on a midtown Manhattan street in December 2024.
Jamie McDonald, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney, and Amanda Houle, Chief of the Office’s Criminal Division were sitting in the front row of court next to Thompson’s widow and family, MS NOW reported. United Healthcare executives sat the row behind them.
Mangione’s defense lawyers are expected to argue that his guilty plea on Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan means that he cannot be prosecuted in state court for Thompson’s slaying because of New York’s double jeopardy law. Double jeopardy bars prosecuting a defendant twice for the same conduct.
After a court hearing in February, Mangione said out loud, “One plus one is two.”
“Double jeopardy by any common-sense definition,” he said.
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