Prosecutors said on Nov. 21 that Luigi Mangione’s death penalty case in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson should carry on unimpeded, urging a judge to reject a defense push to dismiss charges and rule out capital punishment over Attorney General Pam Bondi’s public statements suggesting Mangione deserves execution. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan also asked U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Garnett to deny the defense’s bid to suppress certain evidence collected during the arrest last year, including a 9 mm handgun, a notebook in which authorities say Mangione described his intent to “wack” an insurance executive, and statements he made to police. “Pretrial publicity, even when intense, is not itself a constitutional defect," prosecutors wrote in a 121-page court filing, citing prior rulings from the Supreme Court and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. As for the evidence, which Mangione’s lawyers contend was collected without a warrant and without him being read his rights, prosecutors said police officers were justified in searching the suspect’s backpack to make sure there were no dangerous items. His statements to officers, they said, were made voluntarily and before he was taken into police custody. Rather than dismissing the case outright or barring the government from seeking the death penalty, prosecutors argued, the defense’s concerns can best be alleviated by carefully questioning prospective jurors about their knowledge of the case and ensuring Mangione’s rights are respected at trial. “What the defendant recasts as a constitutional crisis is merely a repackaging of arguments” rejected in previous cases, prosecutors said. “None warrants dismissal of the indictment or categorical preclusion of a congressionally authorized punishment.” Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. In September, a judge threw out state terrorism charges against him but kept the rest of that case — including an intentional murder charge — in place. Mangione is due back in court in the state case on Dec. 1 as his lawyers seek to bar prosecutors from using much of the same evidence seized upon his arrest. Mangione's next court date in the federal case is Jan. 9. Thompson, 50, was killed Dec. 4, 2024, as he arrived at a Manhattan hotel for his company’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims. Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Bondi announced in April that she was directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty, declaring even before Mangione was formally indicted that capital punishment is warranted for a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.” The defense argued in a September court filing that Bondi’s announcement — which she followed with Instagram posts and a TV appearance — showed the decision was “based on politics, not merit.” They also said her remarks tainted the grand jury process that resulted in his indictment a few weeks later. Bondi’s statements and other official actions — including a highly choreographed perp walk that saw Mangione led up a Manhattan pier by armed officers, and the Trump administration’s flouting of established death penalty procedures — “have violated Mr. Mangione’s constitutional and statutory rights and have fatally prejudiced this death penalty case,” his lawyers said. Trump, who oversaw an unprecedented run of 13 executions at the end of his first term, has also offered opinions about Mangione despite court rules against any pretrial publicity that could interfere with the right to a fair trial. “He shot someone in the back, as clear as you’re looking at me or I’m looking at you. He shot — he looked like a pure assassin,” Trump told Fox News in September. In their Nov. 21 filing, federal prosecutors countered that Bondi’s remarks were irrelevant to the process because there's no evidence that grand jurors who voted to indict Mangione were influenced. “This argument, like others, rests on conjecture rather than evidence,” the prosecution team said. Nor has the defense cited any precedent “suggesting that public commentary renders a grand jury incapable of fulfilling its constitutional role," they added.

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled on Nov. 20 that expert testimony about shaken baby syndrome is scientifically unreliable and inadmissible in two upcoming trials, a decision that comes as the long-held medical diagnoses have come under increased scrutiny. The court determined that a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, which is also known as abusive head trauma, is not generally accepted within the “biomechanical community” and is therefore not “sufficiently reliable” for admission at the trials. The 6-1 ruling deals with the trials of two men facing charges in separate cases, in which the young victims showed symptoms that have come to be associated with shaken baby syndrome. The justices, using an abbreviation for the syndrome, concluded in their lengthy decision that “there was no test supporting a finding that humans can produce the physical force necessary to cause the symptoms associated with SBS/AHT in a child." But Justice Rachel Wainer Apter, in a strongly worded dissent, said the other justices put more weight on the views of individual biomechanical engineers over the “consensus perspective of every major medical society in the world.” That, she said, includes all the medical discipline involved in the diagnosis and treatment of shaken baby syndrome — pediatrics, child abuse pediatrics, neurology, neuroradiology, neurosurgery, radiology, ophthalmology and emergency medicine. Wainer Apter also noted that every other U.S. state allows testimony in court on the syndrome and “every other court that has considered the question” has held such evidence as admissible. “No case has ever concluded that evidence of SBS/AHT is unreliable,” she wrote. “And no case has ever found its reliability sufficiently questioned to preclude its admission at a civil or criminal trial.” According to the Mayo Clinic, the syndrome is a result of forcefully shaking an infant or a toddler, which can damage or destroy a child’s brain cells and cause permanent brain damage or even death. Symptoms include bleeding around the brain, brain swelling and bleeding in the eyes. Prosecutors and medical societies say the syndrome is the leading cause of fatal head injuries in children younger than 2, with more than 1,000 cases reported in the U.S. each year, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome. But defense lawyers and some in the medical and scientific communities argue that shaken baby diagnosis is flawed and has led to wrongful convictions, pointing to overturned convictions or dropped charges in California, Ohio, Massachusetts and Michigan. The state Attorney General's Office declined to comment on Nov. 20, but the Public Defender's Office hailed the decision as a “landmark” moment, saying it reflected the importance of relying on “reliable, well-supported scientific evidence” in criminal cases. "Where the science is uncertain, the stakes are simply too high to permit unsupported expert opinions to decide a person’s guilt or to justify separating children from their parents,” Cody Mason, a managing attorney in the Public Defender's Office, said in a statement.

Missouri has escalated its attempt to seize Chinese government-owned property across the United States, asking the Trump administration for help collecting on a roughly $25 billion court judgment related to the COVID-19 pandemic that Beijing has flatly rejected. Missouri is asking the U.S. State Department to formally notify China that the state intends to pursue assets with full or partial Chinese government ownership to satisfy the judgment, state Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said. The move stems from a lawsuit alleging China hoarded personal protective equipment during the early months of the pandemic, harming Missouri and its residents. A federal judge ruled for Missouri earlier this year after China declined to participate in the trial, calling the lawsuit “ very absurd ” when it was filed in 2020. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said earlier this year that its actions during the pandemic aren’t subject to U.S. jurisdiction and it doesn’t recognize the ruling. Some legal experts have cast doubt on whether Missouri can collect on the judgment, because federal law generally shields foreign nations from lawsuits in U.S. courts. Hanaway said she expects a long process. “We think the state was damaged. We want to recover,” Hanaway said. “It costs money to provide health care and other benefits to people as a result of the epidemic.” As a first step, Hanaway's office sent a letter on Nov. 19 to federal court asking it to forward copies of the judgment to the Secretary of State's Office to be served on China. She said her office is still assembling a list of Chinese properties that could be targeted. She said Missouri is focusing on properties wholly owned by the Chinese government, as well as those owned by companies in which the Chinese government has a stake. Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a statement on Nov. 19 that China's policies and measures during the pandemic were “acts of national sovereignty and are not subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.” “The so-called pandemic compensation lawsuits fabricated by certain forces in the U.S. ignore basic objective facts and violate fundamental legal principles; they are purely malicious frivolous lawsuits and political manipulation, with extremely sinister intentions,” Pengyu said. “China firmly opposes them and will not accept any so-called default judgments.” The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The case has taken an unusual path. U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Limbaugh initially dismissed the lawsuit in 2022, saying Missouri couldn’t sue China or the other defendants. But an appeals court allowed one part of the lawsuit to proceed: the allegation that China hoarded personal protective equipment, such as respirator masks, medical gowns and gloves. After Chinese officials didn’t respond, Limbaugh accepted Missouri’s estimate of past and potential future damages of more than $8 billion, tripled it as federal law allows, and added 3.91% interest until it’s collected. The lawsuit was originally filed by state Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Trump ally who subsequently won election to the U.S. Senate. It was carried on by Attorney General Andrew Bailey, another Trump ally who resigned in September to become co-deputy director of the FBI. Hanaway, a former U.S. attorney and Missouri House speaker, inherited the case when she was appointed AG by Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe.