Maryland native Luigi Mangione, 26, was indicted Tuesday by a New York grand jury and charged with an act of terrorism for the Dec. 4 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the indictment at a news conference Tuesday. Mangione had previously faced five charges in New York, the most serious of which was second-degree murder. The indictment ramps up the stakes to include murder in the first degree in furtherance of terrorism, along with two counts of second-degree murder and multiple weapons charges.

“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” Bragg said. “It incurred in one of the most bustling parts of our city, threatening the safety of local residents and tourists alike, and commuters and business people just starting out on their day.”

Thompson, 50, was shot and killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare was holding an investor conference.

“The intent was to sow terror,” Bragg said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to file paperwork seeking Mangione’s extradition from Pennsylvania, where he has been held without bail since being arrested at a McDonald’s on Dec. 9. He is charged there with gun and forgery offenses, the latter for allegedly. He is scheduled to appear at 8:30 a.m. Thursday in a preliminary hearing on those charges, followed by an extradition hearing the same day, half an hour later.

Mangione’s Pennsylvania lawyer has questioned the evidence for the forgery charge and the legal grounding for the gun charge. The attorney also has said Mangione would fight extradition to New York.

First degree varies by state

Mangione, who grew up in Maryland and graduated in 2016 as the Gilman School’s valedictorian, is accused of carefully planning Thompson’s murder — traveling to New York to find him, carrying a gun with a silencer to carry out the killing, and developing a document that chronicles his disdain for the insurance industry, which law enforcement said they found on him at the time of his arrest.

Had the shooting taken place in Maryland, he would already have been charged with first-degree murder, which, by Maryland statute, is defined as “a deliberate, premeditated, and willful killing” that could include “lying in wait.”

Each state defines its own murder statute, and many state laws lay out differing levels of seriousness with different definitions of what constitutes each degree. In New York, second-degree murder mainly refers to intentionally causing the death of another person — roughly the same as Maryland’s first-degree murder statute, said Bradley S. Shepherd, a Maryland defense attorney with Posner & Cord LLC.

New York’s second-degree murder statute also includes killings that happen in the commission of other felonies, as well as certain other “reckless” conduct that leads to a person’s death.

First-degree murder under New York law refers to a killing involving specific aggravating factors — intentional homicides in which the victim is a judge, a first responder or a police officer — or when a defendant uses torture, kills a witness to prevent them from testifying or kills somebody “in furtherance of an act of terrorism.” It also includes murder-for-hire cases.

“It’s not a common thing, and it’s not easy to satisfy that standard,” said Nicole Brenecki, a partner at the Brooklyn, New York-based law firm Jodré Brenecki LLP.

‘Very, very big and serious’

Criminal defense attorneys told The Baltimore Sun earlier this week, before the indictment, that obtaining a first-degree murder conviction against Mangione in New York would be an uphill battle.

“It would be a really grandiose theory,” said Brenecki. “They’d really have to nail him on the intent” of the homicide being a terrorist act to influence the healthcare industry, she said.

“That’s very, very big and serious,” she said, noting that she personally didn’t think it’d be worth it for prosecutors to upgrade the charge.

The most common penalty for both first- and second-degree murder in New York is life, and the main difference is that a first-degree murder conviction can lead to life without the possibility of parole, said Richard Schoenstein, a partner at New York-based Tarter Krinsky & Drogin LLP. Only a very narrow range of second-degree murder convictions, specifically involving victims under the age of 14, can lead to a sentence of life without parole.

The minimum term of imprisonment is slightly higher for defendants convicted of first-degree murder — they must serve at least 20 years before being paroled, rather than 15 for second-degree murder. Both Maryland and New York have eliminated the death penalty.

Upgrading Mangione’s charge “adds a degree of proof and legal complexity,” said Schoenstein. He wasn’t sure what the upside of pursuing first-degree murder conviction would be but speculated that it could be related to the reaction to the high-profile killing, which has included online praise of Mangione by some who see him as a kind of crusader against the insurance industry.

“Maybe you want to send a message by attacking it as an act of terrorism,” he said, noting it would still “complicate the case.”

Investigators’ working theory is that Mangione, an Ivy League computer science grad from a prominent Maryland family, was propelled by anger at the U.S. health care system. A law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press this week said that when arrested, he was carrying a handwritten letter that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed.

Mangione repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if told they just had to live with it.

In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with a back problem to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say the pain made it impossible to work.

“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”

He was never a UnitedHealthcare client, according to the insurer.

Mangione apparently cut himself off from his family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing to San Francisco authorities in November.

Thompson, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, was trained as an accountant. A married father of two high-schoolers, he had worked at the giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.

Associated Press contributed to this report.

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