A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Big news this morning in a state court in New York City. The legal team representing Luigi Mangione says they will pursue a psychiatric defense, claiming Mangione was experiencing an extreme emotional disturbance. The 28-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges he stalked and murdered a health insurance executive on a Manhattan street in 2024. NPR's Brian Mann was in the courtroom today. He joins us now from the street nearby. Brian Mann, so a psychiatric defense. Tell us what that means.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: Yes, New York law specifically allows defenses to claim that criminal acts, including violence, happened when an individual was in a state of extreme emotional disturbance. Mangione's legal team signaling today they will pursue that defense. They made it clear they've been having Mangione evaluated for months. Now, there was some fierce back-and-forth in the courtroom. The assistant Manhattan district attorney who's trying this case, Joel Seidemann, argued that the defense has been withholding information about Mangione's exact mental condition. The judge responded by ordering Mangione's attorneys to share more information immediately.
So we still don't know the exact nature of the mental illness or disturbance that Mangione's defense is going to point to here. Judge Gregory Caro says more information will be released to the public after some sections of those reports are redacted in the next few days. Now, A, it is important to say for legal reasons this specific psychiatric defense will not work in federal court, so we may see a fundamentally different case during the next federal trial.
MARTÍNEZ: OK, good to know. Now, while that plays out, you wrote about this case at npr.org, and you say that some people see Mangione as kind of a folk hero.
MANN: Yeah, as I interviewed legal experts and people who study political violence, this phrase, folk hero, just kept coming up. Remember, Mangione is accused of killing Brian Thompson. He's a 50-year-old man at the time, a father of two. This is not the kind of alleged crime that usually draws significant amounts of public support. But because the man who was gunned down was head of UnitedHealthcare, a big, profitable health insurance company, and because healthcare is just so expensive and controversial and frustrating in the U.S., a lot of people appear to see this not as a murder case, but as a political act. More than 40,000 people have donated to Mangione's legal defense fund, and today, again there was a big crowd of Mangione supporters at the courthouse.
MARTÍNEZ: And some experts told you that his support is being heightened by the fact that he's considered handsome. I mean, that really a factor?
MANN: You know, as a matter of fact, every expert I interviewed said they think public perceptions about Mangione's politics are being shaped in part by how people react to his physical appearance. Images of Mangione have gone viral. I spoke about this with Daniel Byman, who studies domestic political violence at Georgetown University, and he made what I think is a really interesting comparison.
DANIEL BYMAN: Che Guevara was, you know, a very bloody revolutionary, and yet, you know, his poster was on dorm room walls. And, you know, the Che Guevara thing actually reminds me a bit of Mangione in that, you know, Mangione's a good-looking guy.
MANN: Now again, Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all state and federal charges, and his legal team declined a request from NPR for an interview. But in a statement posted online, They rejected the idea that Mangione has espoused any form of political violence. One other bit of conflict in the courtroom today, A, is about the schedule for this trial. The prosecution accused the defense of trying to slow-walk this, but it does look like we're on track for the state trial to begin in September. The federal trial now expected to begin early next year.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's Brian Mann in Manhattan. Brian, thanks.
MANN: Thanks.
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