A New York judge on Tuesday dropped terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating a healthcare executive.
Judge Gregory Carro tossed the terrorism charges against Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a premeditated and orchestrated murder plot in December, according to multiple media outlets. However, the New York judge kept the state’s second-degree murder charges against the Ivey League graduate.
Carro — appointed to the court of claims by Republican Gov. George Pataki in 2002 and an acting justice for the New York County Supreme Court — wrote in a decision that, although the killing went beyond a run-of-the-mill street crime, a murder motivated by ideology does not necessarily constitute terrorism under New York law.
“While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care industry generally, it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population,’ and indeed, there was no evidence presented of such a goal,” Carro wrote, according to the Associated Press.
Mangione previously pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of murder, including murder as an act of terrorism for the Dec. 4 killing of Thompson. The health care CEO was shot from behind while visiting an investor conference at the New York Hilton Midtown. Law enforcement discovered the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” scrawled onto the ammunition, mimicking a phrase typically used to describe how insurance providers avoid paying claims.
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