Why prosecutors charged Luigi Mangione with terrorism and a judge said no

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York prosecutors tried to use a 9/11-era terrorism law in their case against Luigi Mangione. But a judge ruled Tuesday that the state anti-terror statute doesn’t apply to the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive on a midtown Manhattan street last year.

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The judge let murder and other charges stand against Mangione, who also faces a federal murder case in CEO Brian Thompson’s death.

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What Mangione no longer faces are New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism.

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If it sounded like an unusual application of a terrorism law, it wasn’t a first. Such charges have been brought — and sometimes rejected — in other cases that weren’t about cross-border extremism or a plot to kill masses of people.

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Here are some things to know about New York’s anti-terrorism law.

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Where did New York’s anti-terror law come from?

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State lawmakers passed it in 2001, six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, saying the state needed “legislation that is specifically designed to combat the evils of terrorism.” Proponents pointed out that many cases could come via state and local law enforcement officers, not just from federal investigations.

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Many other states passed similar laws around the same time, and Congress approved the Patriot Act.

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What does the law say?

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Essentially an add-on to existing criminal statutes, it says that an underlying offense constitutes terrorism if it’s done with an intent to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” to “influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion” or to “affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”

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What does it do?

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If a defendant is convicted, the terrorism designation boosts the underlying offense into a more serious sentencing category. For example, an assault normally punishable by up to 25 years in prison would carry a potential life sentence.

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In Mangione’s case, one of the terror-murder charges carried a mandatory life sentence. The remaining murder charge against him is punishable by 15 years to life in prison if he’s convicted.

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New York does not have the death penalty. The state’s highest court threw out a capital punishment law in 2004.

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Why did prosecutors say the terror law applied in Mangione’s case?

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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, put it simply last year: “The intent was to sow terror.”

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The shooting happened early on a workday in a busy area where UnitedHealthcare was holding an investor conference, prosecutors noted. They also have said Mangione’s writings show that he aimed “to intimidate and coerce UHC workers and other workers in the health insurance industry.”

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In a handwritten diary, the 26-year-old described himself as a “revolutionary anarchist” and mused about rebelling against “the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing. They said Mangione researched UnitedHealthcare — having apparently never been a customer himself _ and laid out a plan to “wack” the CEO during the “parasitic” investor gathering, asserting that such a killing would be “targeted, precise and doesn’t risk innocents.”