Former Judge Andrew Napolitano told Newsmax on Monday that Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, will likely try to argue that he "didn’t know right from wrong" when he allegedly shot Thompson in Manhattan on Dec. 4.
Napolitano, on "Wake Up America," said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, the attorney retained by Mangione to represent him, will likely meet with the accused killer this week to discuss the extradition process and predicted that she will advise her client to "waive extradition, get … to New York, and begin the process of gathering the evidence that the government has."
The former judge noted that Mangione’s attorney could "challenge his confinement," which would force the government "to come forward with evidence" to justify his imprisonment ahead of trial, which "is a way for defense counsel to learn the nature and extent of the evidence that the government has about the defendant quickly, rather than waiting for the government to pass it on to defense counsel."
Napolitano also noted that Friedman Agnifilo previously served as the chief assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, saying she was "the former chief of all the criminal prosecutions in that office, so she knows well how the office operates. … It's to [Mangione's] advantage to have somebody that talented and that experienced and that familiar with the prosecutor's office" representing him in court.
Napolitano went on to predict that "the only defense available" to Friedman Agnifilo is to argue that Mangione suffered from a "diminished capacity, some form of a mental disease whereby he didn't know right from wrong."
He added that "as skeptical as normal people are of that, and as rarely as it works, once in a while it does work. And she may have an ethical obligation to try it, because, from my observation, it’s the only defense available."
The former judge noted later that Friedman Agnifilo "does not have to prove that he's insane" in order to argue this defense because "the government has to prove that he's sane" and that "every element of the crime" was planned by the defendant.
Napolitano said: "Normally, the sanity of the defendant is a given. But where the defendant, through his lawyer, says, I'm not sane, I didn't know what I was doing, that imposes on the government the obligation to prove that he is sane and did know what he was doing."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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