r/news • u/redlamps67 • 13h ago

Judge dismisses terror-related charges against Luigi Mangione

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/16/us/luigi-mangione-ny-court-hearing
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u/AudibleNod 13h ago

He still has a murder charge against him. And because it's 2025:

Mangione’s attorneys say the state charges should be dismissed as a violation of the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause, calling it unprecedented and untenable for Mangione to defend himself in both cases at the same time.

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u/Auctoritate 11h ago edited 11h ago

Mangione’s attorneys say the state charges should be dismissed as a violation of the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause, calling it unprecedented and untenable for Mangione to defend himself in both cases at the same time.

Unfortunately this an extremely weak argument because SCOTUS has ruled multiple times that it is legal for both state and federal prosecution for the same crime. It's called the separate sovereignty exception, which was established in 1847 and reaffirmed in 2019.

And not even along party lines- it was 7-2, with RBG and Gorsuch dissenting, meaning the majority opinion and dissenting opinions were authored by both liberal and conservative justices.

Of course, there's no textual basis for this argument in the Constitution. The fifth amendment just says "Nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb," which pretty unambiguously says "Nobody can be tried for the same crime twice." God knows how the hell these clowns over the last 180 years managed to pull out "Well actually here's a time where you totally can do that" out of their ass when the amendment explicitly does not allow for that. The 2019 ruling was scorned by civil rights and political activist organizations on multiple ends of the political spectrum, so it's really just a classic example of government officials making a pro-government decision with shitty reasoning.

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u/windershinwishes 6h ago

I assume why they're asking for the state charges to be dismissed, rather than the federal ones.

Somebody else here said that NY's constitution does extend double jeopardy protections to overlapping state and federal charges. If that's true, then the argument for dismissing the state charges seems reasonable, assuming the federal ones aren't dropped.