A federal judge on Wednesday delayed the start of Luigi Mangione’s trial by about a month, declining a request from his lawyers that the trial be postponed until early next year.
The judge, Margaret Garnett, said she was taking into account the “paramount issues” that included Mr. Mangione’s right to participate meaningfully in every aspect of his defense and the public’s interest in a speedy trial. She moved the trial from the beginning of September to October.
Last month, lawyers for Mr. Mangione, 27, asked Judge Garnett to delay his federal trial until January, arguing that an early phase of jury screening, which involved the filling out of questionnaires, could in part overlap with Mr. Mangione’s state trial and risk exposing prospective jurors to news coverage of the allegations against him.
Prosecutors opposed the lawyers’ request. An assistant U.S. attorney, Dominic A. Gentile, told the judge that any delay would prejudice the government’s interest in trying the case in a reasonable period of time.
Mr. Gentile said the judge needed only to look outside the window to see people “who follow this defendant and believe what he did was right.”
“That’s why the federal trial should proceed as the court has already scheduled,” Mr. Gentile said.
In trying to resolve the matter of Mr. Mangione’s federal trial date, Judge Garnett left open the possibility of a further change in timing. She said Mr. Mangione’s unusual position of being prosecuted by both the state and the federal government meant that in order for her to ensure that Mr. Mangione received a fair trial, “some things will be outside of our control.”
“That’s the situation we are in because of the nature of these dual prosecutions,” the judge said.
Before the hearing began, Mr. Mangione was led into the packed courtroom, in beige jail clothes and with his ankles shackled, as supporters seated in the gallery, some clad in their signature green, angled their bodies toward him. They craned their necks, smiles plastered on their faces.
Sitting between his lawyers, Mr. Mangione appeared calm, at one point rubbing his temples.
As the hearing began, Judge Garnett disclosed that she had earlier met privately with Mr. Mangione’s lawyers without his being present to discuss an issue concerning defense strategy that she said could not be addressed in open court. She said the interest in keeping the matter confidential had overridden the public’s interest in disclosure.
Responding to the judge’s questions in court, Mr. Mangione acknowledged that he understood he could have attended the meeting but had waived his right to do so.
Although Judge Garnett did not adopt the change in trial date that Mr. Mangione’s lawyers had requested, the slight delay she did authorize could set off a chain reaction. Mr. Mangione’s lawyers have said they would ask the judge in his state trial, slated to start in June, to push back that case if his federal case is delayed.
The challenges in bringing Mr. Mangione’s case to trial were present almost from the beginning. The police spent nearly five days after the December 2024 murder of Brian Thompson, a health care executive, searching for the person who fatally shot him outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
Officers arrested Mr. Mangione as he sat eating breakfast and browsing on a laptop in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa.
He was charged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office with 11 counts, including murder and terrorism. Days later, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged him on four counts, including one that carried a potential death penalty if the government decided to seek it.
While murder cases are typically prosecuted in state courts, in Mr. Mangione’s case, federal prosecutors have said that he crossed state lines to stalk and ultimately kill Mr. Thompson, giving the federal government jurisdiction to prosecute him.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges he faces in both federal and state court. The parallel cases have resulted in what Mr. Mangione’s lead lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, has called a “tug of war between two different prosecution offices.”
The federal prosecutors said when they announced charges against Mr. Mangione that he was expected to proceed to trial first on the state charges, suggesting that the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, and federal prosecutors had reached an agreement to that effect.
Then, President Trump returned to office in 2025. In April, his attorney general, Pam Bondi, said prosecutors would seek capital punishment in Mr. Mangione’s case. She cited Mr. Trump’s directive that the Department of Justice renew death penalty requests, which had been halted in 2021 under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Both cases have since narrowed.
In the state case, the judge, Gregory Carro, dismissed the terrorism charges, saying he found the evidence behind the counts “legally insufficient.” In federal court, Judge Garnett dismissed two charges against Mr. Mangione, including the death-penalty count. He now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
In January, in response to a request by the parties to set a trial date, Judge Garnett said Mr. Mangione’s federal trial would begin in October, following jury selection. Then, in February, Justice Carro announced that Mr. Mangione’s state case would start before then — on June 8.
Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
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