What Is Double Jeopardy, and Why Are Luigi Mangione’s Lawyers Claiming It?

Mangione previously pleaded not guilty to all the federal and state charges levied against him, and his lawyers have not publicly disclosed why the 28-year-old chose to change his plea in the federal case. But after the hearing on Friday, his lawyers announced that they had filed the motion claiming double jeopardy.

“It was a single tragic event, yet he’s being prosecuted twice for the same conduct,” Karen Friedman Agnifilo, one of Mangione’s lawyers, told reporters on Friday.

In the motion, his lawyers argue that Mangione’s federal guilty plea “‘terminates’ the federal proceeding” and is now considered to be a “previous prosecution,” meaning that the New York state case would be a “second prosecution,” triggering double jeopardy.

His lawyers also allege in the filing that the Justice Department and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office coordinated their cases against Mangione so that the state would go to trial first “to ensure dual successive prosecutions, in order to attempt to avoid double jeopardy protections.” They allege that this effort was meant “to maximize the punitive effectiveness of the two cases at the expense of Mr. Mangione,” which in turn “undercuts the separate sovereign rationale of the federal double jeopardy jurisprudence.”