‘Major uphill climb’: Elie Honig dumps cold water on UnitedHealthcare CEO murder suspect’s potential insanity defense

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said Monday that it would be challenging for Luigi Mangione, the suspect accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, to successfully plead insanity under New York law.

Mangione hired Karen Friedman Agnifilo to represent him in New York, a New York attorney who said Tuesday on “Anderson Cooper 360” that given the strong evidence against him, the suspect may be able to plead not guilty by reason of insanity due to seeming well-adjusted before the alleged crime. Honig, on “CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta,” argued an insanity plea by Mangione may be better than just pleading not guilty, but that the suspect’s conduct suggests he is not insane by the standards laid out in New York law.

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“I think there are major problems with an insanity defense as applied here. I agree it might be better than the alternative, which is Luigi Mangione having to argue somehow, ‘That’s not me.’ I don’t think there’s any chance of that. But I also think an insanity defense is a major, major uphill climb for Mangione,” Honig said. “You have to show under the law, under New York law, that the person does not understand the nature and consequences of his actions. He doesn’t even understand what he’s doing. Clearly, this guy understood the consequences of his actions. We know that because he had an elaborate escape plan.”

“If he didn’t understand right or wrong consequences, he just stands there. He has no idea what he’s done. Instead, he had a very carefully planned out escape plan. And it’s important to understand, an insanity defense does not just mean a person was spiraling, a person was depressed, even a person was manic, or a person had a really rough stretch of mental health,” he continued. “That’s not enough to make out a criminal defense of insanity. You have to show that the person was so far gone they didn’t understand what they were doing and they didn’t understand the nature of it.”

Mangione is wanted in New York for second-degree murder, according to The New York Times. He shouted at reporters Tuesday outside of Pennsylvania’s Blair County Courthouse as he appeared for his extradition proceeding that something unspecified is “completely out of touch” and is insulting the “intelligence of the American people.”

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