LOWER MANHATTAN (WABC) -- Luigi Mangione is expected to be arraigned in state court Monday on murder and terror charges for allegedly gunning down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson earlier this month.
Inside the courthouse, approximately two dozen members of the public - all but two are young women -- were waiting to get into the courtroom. Some claimed they showed up in the frigid cold of downtown Manhattan as early at 4 a.m.
"This is a grave injustice, and that's why people are here," said one woman who arrived at 5 a.m. She said that the case made her feel "ashamed" of her country.
"Its very distributing to see how the hundreds of the school shootings that have happened, none of them have been charged with terrorism, but when a millionaire is murdered, they charge him with terrorism," she said.
Mangione, 26, was charged last week in an 11-count indictment including one count of first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, two counts of second-degree murder, and multiple charges related to his possession of an illegal firearm.
Mangione was initially scheduled to appear in state court last week following extradition from Pennsylvania, but the plans were upended after federal prosecutors announced a separate criminal complaint charging the Ivy League graduate with murder through use of a firearm, two stalking charges and a firearms offense. Mangione's attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo last week criticized the parallel cases against her client as "highly unusual" and potentially unconstitutional.
"In over three decades of prosecuting and defending criminal cases in New York, frankly, I've never seen anything like what is happening here," she told a federal judge last week.
If convicted in federal court, Mangione faces the possibility of the death penalty, while the maximum penalty for the state charges is life in prison without the possibility of parole. State and federal prosecutors are coordinating their cases, and the state case is expected to go to trial first.
"This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation," Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a news conference last week announcing the charges that brand Mangione a terrorist.
Prosecutors allege that Mangione meticulously planned and carried out the murder of Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel on the morning of Dec. 4 before fleeing the state to Pennsylvania, where he was arrested days later at a McDonald's. According to the federal complaint, Mangione was in possession of a notebook in which he expressed hostility to healthcare executives, described the insurance industry as his target because it "checks every box," and laid out his intent to "whack" Thompson at United HealthCare's investors' conference.
Mangione's actions have led to an outpouring of support online and a wave of hostility directed at the health insurance industry, while law enforcement has raised concerns about the alleged murderer being heralded as a "martyr." His arrival in New York by helicopter flanked by heavily armed officers as well as New York Mayor Eric Adams was meant to be a show of force but appeared to only bolster Mangione's status online.
"I wanted to look him in the eye and state that you carried out this terrorist act in my city, the city that the people of New York love and I wanted to be there to show the symbolism of that," Adams said last week after Mangione arrived in New York.
The state charges could carry life in prison without parole while the federal charges could carry the possibility of the death penalty.
Prosecutors have said both the state and federal cases will proceed on parallel tracks with the state charge expected to go to trial first.
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