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    Luigi Mangione Death Penalty Bid May Pit Prosecutors Against Each Other

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    State and federal prosecutors have both accused Mr. Mangione of killing a health insurance executive. Attorney General Pam Bondi is pushing aggressively for capital punishment.Luigi Mangione is being prosecuted for murder by two agencies: the Department of Justice, which answers to President Trump, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is led by the only prosecutor to convict President Trump.Mr. Trump and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, are far from natural allies. And the high-profile case of Mr. Mangione, who is charged with killing a health care executive, could set their offices on a collision course.When Mr. Mangione was arrested in December, before President Trump took office, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said the state prosecution would occur first. But last week, Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, signaled that the Justice Department might move quickly, saying that federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty for Mr. Mangione.“The president’s directive was very clear: We are to seek the death penalty when possible,” Ms. Bondi said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”Deliberations over whether to seek the federal death penalty can take a year or more in the Southern District and the Justice Department. Ms. Bondi’s swift announcement was all the more unusual given that Mr. Mangione has yet to be formally indicted in federal court.Mr. Mangione’s case has become an arena for Ms. Bondi to show her commitment to the president. Her decision “is more political theater than anything else,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Read the Justice Department’s filing in the Adams case.

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      Case 1:24-cr-00556-DEH Document 175-1 Filed 03/25/25
      Page 10 of 15
      the motion is uncontested, the court should ordinarily presume that the prosecutor is acting in good
      faith and dismiss the indictment without prejudice”). But Adams’s consent-which was
      negotiated without my Office’s awareness or participation-would not guarantee a successful
      motion, given the basic flaws in the Department’s rationales. See Nederlandsche Combinatie, 428
      F. Supp. at 117 (declining to “rubber stamp” dismissal because although defendant did not appear
      to object, “the court is vested with the responsibility of protecting the interests of the public on
      whose behalf the criminal action is brought”).
      The Government “may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment” under Rule 48(a) of the
      Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. “The principal object of the ‘leave of court’ requirement is
      apparently to protect a defendant against prosecutorial harassment, e.g., charging, dismissing, and
      recharging, when the Government moves to dismiss an indictment over the defendant’s objection.”
      Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S. 22, 30 n.15 (1977). “But the Rule has also been held to permit
      the court to deny a Government dismissal motion to which the defendant has consented if the
      motion is prompted by considerations clearly contrary to the public interest.” Id.; see also JM 9-
      2.050 (reflecting Department’s position that a “court may decline leave to dismiss if the manifest
      public interest requires it).
      “Rarely will the judiciary overrule the Executive Branch’s exercise of these prosecutorial
      decisions.” Blaszczak, 56 F.4th at 238. But courts, including the Second Circuit, will nonetheless
      inquire as to whether dismissal would be clearly contrary to the public interest. See, e.g., id. at
      238-42 (extended discussion of contrary to public interest standard and cases applying it); see also
      JM 9-2.050 (requiring “a written motion for leave to dismiss. . . explaining fully the reason for
      the request” to dismiss for cases of public interest as well as for cases involving bribery). Although
      it appears rare, at least one court in our district has rejected a dismissal under Rule 48(a) as contrary
      to the public interest, regardless of the defendant’s consent. See Nederlandsche Combinatie, 428
      F. Supp. At 116-17 (“After reviewing the entire record, the court has determined that a dismissal
      of the indictment against Mr. Massaut is not in the public interest. Therefore, the government’s
      motion to dismiss as to Mr. Massaut must be and is denied.”).
      The cases show some inconsistency concerning what courts should do if they find the
      standard for dismissal without prejudice not met. Some have instead dismissed indictments with
      prejudice. See, e.g., United States v. Madzarac, 678 F. Supp. 3d 43 (D.D.C. 2023). The better-
      reasoned view, however, is that courts considering a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss without
      prejudice must either grant or deny the motion as made-they cannot grant the dismissal, but do
      so with prejudice, unless the Government consents. See United States v. B.G.G., 53 F.4th 1353,
      1369 (11th Cir. 2022) (“[R]ule 48(a) does not give the district court the discretion to rewrite the
      government’s dismissal motion from one without prejudice to one with prejudice.”); United States
      v. Flotron, 17 Cr. 00220 (JAM), 2018 WL 940554, at *5 (D. Conn. Feb. 19, 2018) (denying
      Government’s motion to dismiss without prejudice as contrary to public interest and requiring
      Government to proceed to trial); see also In re United States, 345 F.3d 450, 453 (7th Cir. 2003)
      (suggesting that courts might condition grant of Rule 48(a) motion on Government’s consent that
      prejudice attach).
      The assigned District Judge, the Honorable Dale E. Ho, appears likely to conduct a
      searching inquiry in this case. Although Judge Ho is a recent appointee with little judicial track
      record, he has resolved the motions in this case in lengthy written opinions that included research
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      Trump Administration Opens Investigation Into Shelters in New York

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      The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the funding and management of New York City hotels operating as shelters for migrants, according to a copy of a federal subpoena sent to a Manhattan hotel.Federal prosecutors sent a subpoena to the Hotel Chandler in Midtown on Wednesday, requesting information related to the migrant shelter program and “a list of full names of aliens currently residing at Hotel Chandler,” including nationality, dates of birth and identification numbers.The subpoena requested testimony and evidence from the hotel related to “an alleged violation” of federal immigration law. It asked the hotel for the names of entities and individuals responsible for the “funding and management of the illegal immigrant/migrant shelter program,” as well as any contracts or agreements related to it.It was unclear why prosecutors sent a subpoena to the Chandler, a hotel on East 31st Street that was converted into a homeless shelter years ago but does not operate as a shelter for migrants.The investigation appears focused at least in part on the management and funding of hotels acting as shelters, but its full scope was unclear as of Wednesday, as was whether other hotels had received subpoenas.The grand jury subpoena was issued by the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. A spokesman for the office, Nicholas Biase, referred questions to the Department of Justice in Washington. A spokesman there declined to comment on what he said was “an ongoing criminal investigation,” adding that he could not discuss the scope or contours of the inquiry.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Attorney Rebuffed by Justice Dept. in Push to Escalate Inquiry into Schumer

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      Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, has been blocked so far in seeking a grand jury investigation into remarks made by Senator Chuck Schumer about Supreme Court justices.Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has been quietly pushing to present evidence against Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, to a federal grand jury over comments he made about Supreme Court justices in 2020, according to people with knowledge of the situation.Justice Department officials have thus far rebuffed the unusual request by Mr. Martin, a partisan ally of President Trump with no previous prosecutorial experience, one of those people said.Mr. Martin has made clear his hopes of investigating whether the remarks made five years ago by Mr. Schumer amounted to threats against Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Bringing such a case is highly unusual and winning a conviction would be difficult, according to current and former prosecutors.Last month, Mr. Martin signaled his intention to take an aggressive approach, writing Mr. Schumer a letter demanding “information and clarification” of remarks he made at a rally on March 4, 2020.“You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Mr. Schumer said at the rally, addressing his remarks to Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Mr. Schumer’s staff retracted his statement and the senator apologized a day later, taking to the floor of the Senate to say, “I should not have used the words I used.”Mr. Schumer added that he had been referring to “political consequences” rather than violent retribution, chalking up his phrasing to his upbringing in Brooklyn.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Woman Lured, Drugged and Stole From Older Men in Deadly Scheme, U.S. Says

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      The 43-year-old woman was arrested in Mexico after a “romance scam on steroids,” an F.B.I. agent said.A 43-year-old Las Vegas woman has been arrested in Mexico on charges that she lured at least four older men on dating websites, drugged them and tried to steal millions of dollars from them in a deadly scheme, the authorities said Friday.The woman, Aurora Phelps, was charged with one count of kidnapping resulting in death in the scheme, which the F.B.I. said had led to at least three deaths.Spencer L. Evans, the top F.B.I. agent in Las Vegas, said Friday that the investigation was “ongoing” and that Ms. Phelps might face more charges in the United States and Mexico.In one case, Ms. Phelps drugged a man in Las Vegas after meeting him online, took him to Mexico City and used his credit card to rent a hotel room, where he died, according to a 21-count indictment unsealed this month.Ms. Phelps pushed the man, who was “zonked out of his mind” on drugs, in a wheelchair as they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border at a pedestrian crossing, Mr. Evans said in an interview on Friday.She took her daughter on the trip to Mexico City, in November 2022, according to the authorities. She had drugged the man during a lunch in Las Vegas one day after meeting him on an online dating service, according to the indictment, filed in federal court in Nevada.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Federal Prosecutor Responsible for Overseeing Major Criminal Cases Resigns

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      A veteran federal prosecutor in Washington responsible for overseeing major criminal cases in one of the nation’s most important offices abruptly resigned on Monday, according to an email sent to colleagues.Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, resigned rather than carry out a directive from the office’s Trump-appointed leadership, according to several people with knowledge of her actions who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.Ms. Cheung did not say what precipitated her decision in her email, but she thanked her colleagues for adhering to the highest standards of professional conduct.“This office is a special place,” she wrote. “I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully.”Ms. Cheung, a Harvard Law School graduate, said prosecutors in the office had conducted themselves “with the utmost integrity” by “following the facts and the law and complying with our moral, ethical and legal obligations.”The resignation came less than a day after President Trump nominated Ed Martin, a right-wing activist who sat on a board that raised cash for rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and pushed for their mass reprieve, to run the office permanently.A spokesman for Mr. Martin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Decisions by Mr. Trump’s appointees have roiled the Justice Department. Last week, seven career officials, in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and at department headquarters, resigned rather than signing the dismissal of federal corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, saying the request by the department’s acting No. 2 official was inappropriate and undermined an appropriate investigation. More

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      Judge Dale Ho Faces Demands to Continue Eric Adams’s Prosecution

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      As Judge Dale E. Ho considers the Justice Department’s request to stop the corruption case against New York’s mayor, former U.S. attorneys are asking him to investigate.Judge Dale E. Ho, who is overseeing the foundering corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, is facing a storm of demands that he look deeply into the federal government’s reasons for seeking to drop the prosecution.On Monday night, three former U.S. attorneys from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut filed a brief asking the judge to conduct an extensive inquiry into whether the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Adams case was in the public interest or merely a pretext for securing the mayor’s cooperation with the administration’s anti-immigration policies.Earlier Monday, Common Cause, the good-government advocacy group, filed a letter with the judge asking that he deny the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Adams case, which the group called part of a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain.” The organization also asked the judge to consider appointing an independent special prosecutor to continue the case in court.And the New York City Bar Association, which has more than 20,000 lawyers as members, said Monday that the order by a top Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, to Danielle R. Sassoon, who was the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, to dismiss the case “cuts to the heart of the rule of law.” The organization called for a “searching inquiry” into facts of what happened.The legal and political crisis encompasses both New York’s City Hall and the U.S. Department of Justice, calling into question Mr. Adams’s future as well as the independence and probity of federal prosecutions.Mr. Adams was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in April. But last week, Mr. Bove caused a cascade of resignations — including Ms. Sassoon’s — as prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington refused to comply with his order. On Friday, Mr. Bove himself signed a formal request that Judge Ho will now consider.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Legal Shakedowns Won’t End With the Adams Case

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      Every occupying force knows the tactic: If you want to cow a large population, pick one of its most respected citizens and demand he debase himself and pledge fealty. If he refuses, execute him and move on to the next one. This is how the Trump Justice Department thinks it will bring U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country under its control, starting last week with the Southern District of New York. Firing or demanding the resignation of a previous administration’s top prosecutors has become standard. After all, elections matter, and a new president should be free to set new priorities.But the Trump Justice Department’s twisted loyalty game is something new, dangerous and self-defeating. And this round probably won’t be the last.In instructing the Southern District to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general, found a useful loyalty test. In his letter to Danielle Sassoon, the interim Southern District U.S. attorney, Mr. Bove gave two transparently inappropriate reasons: a baseless claim that the prosecution was politicized, which her powerful resignation letter demolished, and a barely concealed suggestion that a dismissal would provide leverage over Mr. Adams and ensure his cooperation in the administration’s efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. As Hagan Scotten, who led the Adams prosecution and has also resigned, nicely put it, “No system of ordered liberty can allow the government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”When Ms. Sassoon, to her considerable credit, refused to debase herself and her office by proceeding on these rationales, Mr. Bove moved on to lawyers in Washington. Each resigned, until finally he found officials who would join him in signing.I don’t know why the Southern District was the first office in Mr. Bove’s cross hairs. Perhaps Mr. Adams’s lawyers, with connections to President Trump and Elon Musk, were first in a line of cronies seeking sweet deals for their clients. Perhaps Mr. Adams’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago gave his case priority. Perhaps Mr. Bove has demanded similar demonstrations of loyalty from other offices, which quietly caved. Or perhaps Mr. Bove, an alumnus of the Southern District, thought its reputation for independence required it to be the first brought to heel.At the nation’s founding, the Southern District quickly assumed importance because the New York Customs House was the source of a large chunk of the government’s revenue. Its present culture was established when President Theodore Roosevelt recruited an elite New York lawyer, Henry Stimson, later a secretary of war and secretary of state, to go after abusive monopolies. Merit, not the usual patronage concerns, drove Mr. Stimson’s recruitment of young lawyers, including Felix Frankfurter and Emory Buckner, who would become an esteemed leader of the office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Career Prosecutors Signed a Dismissal Request in Eric Adams Case

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      About two dozen lawyers in the Justice Department’s public integrity section conferred on Friday morning to wrestle with a demand from a Trump political appointee that many of them viewed as improper: One of them needed to sign the official request to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams.The acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove III, told the shellshocked staff of the section responsible for prosecuting public corruption cases that he needed a signature on court motions. The lawyers knew that those who had already refused had resigned, and they could also be forced out.By Friday afternoon, a veteran prosecutor in the section, Ed Sullivan, agreed to submit the request in Manhattan federal court to shield his colleagues from being fired, or resigning en masse, according to three people briefed on the interaction, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.The filing landed in the court docket Friday evening, bearing the name of Mr. Sullivan and that of a criminal division supervisor as well as the signature of Mr. Bove.Mr. Bove, the filing said, “concluded that dismissal is necessary because of appearances of impropriety and risks of interference with the 2025 elections in New York City.” The stated justification was remarkable because of its acknowledgment that politics, not the evidence in the case, had played a guiding role.On Thursday, six lawyers — the Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and five prosecutors in Washington — resigned rather than accede to Mr. Bove’s demands. On Friday, a seventh stepped down, writing in his resignation letter that only a “fool” or a “coward” would sign off on the dismissal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More