UnitedHealthcare CEO murder: Former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo to represent Luigi Mangione

Luigi Mangione has retained former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo to lead his legal defense amid murder charges in New York. Mangione faces a second-degree murder charge in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Karen Friedman Agnifilo was a high-ranking deputy in the Manhattan district attorney’s office for years before entering private practice.

Friedman Agnifilo’s law firm, Agnifilo Intrater LLP, confirmed in a statement late Friday that she had been retained to represent Mangione. However, the firm said she would not comment on the case at this time.

Friedman Agnifilo was the chief assistant district attorney from 2014 to 2021 and was previously chief of the office’s trial division. She is also a frequent television news guest and commentator and a former legal analyst for CNN. She co-hosts a weekly podcast and is the legal adviser for Law & Order.

Friedman husband and law partner, Mark Agnifilo, is representing Sean “Diddy” Combs in the hip-hop mogul’s Manhattan federal sex trafficking case.

The arrest of Luigi Mangione was a dramatic event. He was apprehended after being spotted having a meal at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on a Monday morning. Thomas Dickey has been representing the shooting suspect in Pennsylvania. Mangione was found with a gun, mask and writings linking him to the ambush outside the New York Hilton Midtown.

Mangione comes from a prominent Maryland family. His grandfather, Nick Mangione, who died in 2008, was a successful real estate developer.

Mangione, who was valedictorian of his elite Maryland prep school, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania. He learned to code in high school and helped start a club at Penn for people interested in gaming and game design, according to a 2018 story in Penn Today, a campus publication.

(With input from AP)