Luigi Mangione prosecutors violating his health privacy rights, defense says
Defense attorneys for alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione say prosecutors at the Manhattan district attorney's office violated his health privacy rights.
You're viewing a single thread.
ABC is greatly, greatly softening the severity of what the Prosecution is alleged to have done.
It is much, much worse than just 'Prosecution accidentally violated his HIPAA rights'.
“The district attorney falsely made up a court date — May 23, 2025 — and drafted a fraudulent subpoena that if Aetna did not provide documents on that date, it would be in contempt of court,” Mangione claims in a New York Supreme document, filed Thursday.
(In legalese, 'Mangione claims' means that his lawyers claim this in an exhaustive report/complaint to the judge of this case.)
The Prosecution appears to have served Aetna with a literally fake, fradulent subpoena.
That subpoena included a court date which was never actually scheduled in the court system.
...
You cannot do this.
Any request for a subpoena like this has to go through and be approved by the judge.
Circumventing the judge and essentially falsely acting on a fraudulent representation of their authority is actually potentially a crime, bare minimum, something a lawyer can be disbarred for.
And this is the District Attorney of New York leading the legal team against Mangione, whom Mangione's Defense Counsel has now formally accused of doing this.
Mangione's counsel has requested to the Judge that, bare minimum, whoever on the Prosecution team is actually responsible for this be removed from the rest of the proceedings, ideally, have the entire trial be dismissed as a mistrial.
...
Here is the entire complaint to the Judge from Mangione's Defense Counsel:
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/mangione-hippa-defense-filing.pdf
...
This could actually blow up at least this New York State level case against Mangione.
...
There are currently two simultaneous cases going on, one at the New York State level, one at the Federal level, all of this is irt the NY case.
Place your bets about how AI was involved now!
Holy shit, this should be huge news being seen everywhere! Instead, the bought media will distract us with more circus sideshows.
The news will literally never talk about any of this. We don’t have freedom of the press in glorious republik of amerika
I was first alerted to it by Status Coup news on youtube... but uh, most lemmy news comms only allow, you know, written articles.
Hey maybe courthousenews counts as a legit, written source?
Post it everywhere if you want to, not like I own the idea of linking to them, rofl!
Meh, I saw this on groundnews yesterday. Plenty of sources.
Are they trying to get a mistrial in order to avoid the fallout of a potential "not guilty" verdict as well as the potential fallout of a "guilty" verdict?
I mean, I guess that isn't impossible, but I really have no idea.
My guess would be that they are just assuming they can get away with whatever bullshit they do, because fuck Luigi, hail corporate?
I do not know.
They are really putting their best effort for minimizing this whole ordeal so tbh I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case.
They who
Holy fuck. That's insane if true.
I don't work as an attorney or anything, but I have some exposure to the inner workings at times. Screw ups are absurdly common. In this case, after the prosecution deleted the documents, the defense sent them a copy from thier side. Just absurd levels of incompetence all the time. So don't rule that out.
Next... in general, for some absolutely absurd reason, it usually isn't illegal for the government to lie. Like on the subpoena. The police are allowed to lie to you during interrogation. ICE has routinely (and not just recently) signed thier own subpoenas and presented them as legal, even though without a judge's signature they aren't legally binding. Odds are that what they did is standard practice, no matter how vile it is. And the signer probably wasn't even a lawyer, just some legal aid.
What's different in this case, is they have a witness saying the prosecution verbally said that what they were doing was wrong, and did it anyway. Not sure if that will matter if it turns out to be standard practice.
In short, the legal system is a farce. TV would have you believe technicalities matter. But they only matter if they support what the judge wants to do anyway.
for some absolutely absurd reason, it usually isn't illegal for the government to lie. Like on the subpoena.
Wait, seriously? They can outright lie, not like “our investigation leads us to believe that you X and are charged with Y” like an arraignment?
No they can't file a fraudulent paperwork with third parties demanding info they have no right to, they can't pretend to charge you with fake charges, they can't file fraudulent paperwork of any sort. They can verbally lie to you when they are interrogating you in hopes of getting you to confess.
I mean... these examples I'm seeing are ... while real, and extremely troubling...
These are all relating to cops.
Lawyers are not cops.
They do not play by the same legal rules, so to speak, and uh... this isn't a case where the complainant or defendant... is a cop.
So ... I mean, I am not a lawyer, but I don't think this ... works in the way you seem to think it does?
Like uh, police can do a bunch of shady shit, they can lie to you, they can bullshit their way into searching you or deciding some extreme circumstance allows them to do some bullshit...
But a subpoena is a not a thing cops do. They do not issue or execute subpoenas.
They execute warrants.
Warrants are not subpoenas.
Well, I envy your hopefulness.
https://www.boston.com/news/national-news/2025/07/15/immigration-agents-demand-tenant-information-from-landlords-stirring-questions-and-confusion/
ICE officers (cops essentially) signed the subpoenas. It's not technically a lie. I can write and sign something I call a subpoena too. So all the prosecution had to do was have someone other than the lawyers sign it, just to help ensure they can't be disbarred for it. While not a lie, I would call it an abuse of power and position for sure. So no, the "fake" subpoena just isn't the smoking gun you think it is.
The only real question is what did they say that the witness heard. None of the news stories I read were very specific about that. And I think the witness worked for the insurance company, which is getting sued for handing over the information. So the witness likely will be pressured not to talk as it could incriminate them and thier employer. And I bet they will be represented by lawyers from the company, as they likely couldn't afford as good of a legal team.
I mean, yes, I agree with you that the entire state of essentially the entire legal system is up in the air, dubious at this point given recent Supreme Court rulings and Executive Orders...
But if we are to pretend/assume that... the law actually exists as is written, that precedent and the way that proceedings generally play out over the history of US law is not all now completely arbitrary...
Then the Prosecution has to actually file their subpoena to, in this case, Aetna, with the actual Judge/Clerk in the case, so that the Judge, the Court, and the Defense Counsel actually know what is going on with the case.
To subvert this process is to subvert the right of a defendant to a fair trial.
Your example regarding ICE essentially self-authorizing themself is widely, widely derided by all manner of lawyers and legal figures across the country as being a dubious violation of this kind, which functionally means they are violating the law every single time they do that.
Yes, I get that the on the ground reality and the legal framework are not at all the same thing in this era of modern facism, but that is because the facists just brazenly and repeatedly violate the law in their own supposed execution of the law.
If you can find me an example of a prosecuting counsel flagrantly fabricating the notion that they have filed a subpoena with the judge/clerk of the court, and this being allowed and the case proceeding without consequence for this behavior, I will be more inclined to believe that this will also be allowed in this Luigi case, but I will remain convinced that such would still represent an egregious miscarriage of justice in the sense of destroying the defendant's right to a fair trial.
Oh man did I go down a rabbit hole. Apparently most subpoenas for information are in fact signed by the attorneys. Only if the opposing side or the reciever wish to challenge it does the judge get involved. This is where the court date comes in. It is supposed to be on the subpoena to show there is a real case or something. I assume because a third party could verify the signer is part of that case.
I don't have a great source for this because I mostly found it as an aswer to a question on legal forumns. Short of some very dense legal procedure docs I doubt there would be a better source.
So it doesn't seem like him signing it is abnormal. News stories do mention that the court date didn't exist. I imagine that is probably common as well if the date hasn't been set. But maybe not.
It seems the biggest procedural issue was that the documents were supposed to be requested to go to the court first, but they requested them to be sent to the prosecution, then forwarded them to the court. I can't see the case being tossed for that.
The defense is complaining that the prosecution should have realized the mistake by the size of documentation they received. I mean maybe, but again, that doesn't seem like grounds for disarmament or dismissal. And they did report the mistake to the court and the defense. It took 12 days, but they claim that is when they realized it. And it would be hard to prove otherwise I think.
I can't find any more reference to a witness to anything, so maybe that wasn't accurate.
.Apparently most subpoenas for information are in fact signed by the attorneys. Only if the opposing side or the reciever wish to challenge it does the judge get involved.
Yes the entire point of the typical subpoena process is that everything goes through the judge who then lets the other legal team know, because pretrial discovery procedures are massively influential as to how a case can later play out when its in a further stage of trial.
For a great example of this, see how badly Alex Jones got fucked because he (and his lawyers) kept stalling and lying during the discovery process.
So it doesn't seem like him signing it is abnormal. News stories do mention that the court date didn't exist. I imagine that is probably common as well if the date hasn't been set. But maybe not.
No, I think this is the core of your confusion.
Read the entire complaint the Defense submitted.
I linked the actual pdf of the whole thing in my main post.
Read the entire couthousenews article I also linked and quoted from.
The vast, vast amount of media outlets covering this story are:
...
The Defense asserts that:
The Prosecution served Aetna with a subpoena, which has a specific court date set for them should they not comply.
That date did not, does not, and never did exist within the system of the Clerk of the Court.
What that means is the Prosectution did not make the Clerk, the Judge, nor anyone else aware of the fact that they had subpoena'd Aetna.
This also means they falsely threatened Aetna with a specific court appearance date that did not exist, was not real, was totally fabricated.
...
Yes, this technically is a 'procedural mistake', but only in the sense of entirely not filing your tax returns for 5 years is an 'accounting mishap'.
It is an egregious affront to, again, the concept of a fair trial, because it demonstrates a willful and intentional lie.
They intimidated Aetna with a fabricated threat.
None of that says it wasn't common practice to do what they did. I think it is egregious, but if it is common than it won't be as big a deal as it is being made out to be. It looks more like short cuts than actions that are more nefarious than normal.
Did Atnea refuse at some point, and this subpoena was the result? I haven't heard that anywhere. Did they go over the top with the threat of being held in contempt of court? I think so, but it was probably boilerplate BS that goes on every subpoena.
Aside from all that. It is common for the prosecution to have information they aren't allowed to present in court. So if they could have gotten the information anyway had they followed proper procedure, then it doesn't automatically impact the fairness of the trial. That is why the jury decides the result.
I think you need more to say it impacted the possibility of a fair trial. Like proof they believed the request would have been denied if filed correctly. Or proof they knew they had more information than they asked for, that it was protected information, and they continued to read it anyway. Otherwise these "mistakes" only impact the lawyers getting sued or what not outside the scope of this trial.
But a subpoena is a not a thing cops do. They do not issue or execute subpoenas.
Eh, sort of. In an investigation, the cops (usually a detective/investigator since this doesn't involve street-level stuff) are using something called a grand jury subpoena. It's not the same thing as a subpoena issued by a court (which, by the way, are often executed by cops... usually something like a constable or marshal's office that works directly with the court). The cop types up the subpoena, which is usually incredibly basic and just says who the subpoena is for, what they want, and what the charge is or may be, and then brings it to the district attorney. The district attorney signs off on it, and afterwards the cop sends it off to the company (and it's 99.999% of the time a company, because the legalities about your dealings with a business make it much easier to obtain the information than other things in your life, meaning it 'bypasses' the legal rulings about searches). No judge involvement is necessary for these types of subpoenas.
Working from my memory, I can also sort of recall that the 'date' listed on those subpoenas isn't really tied to a specific court date either. The stock forms I remember the cops using just said that they gave the company a time limit of 'X.' I'd have to see the specific paperwork that was filed in order to say whether the prosecution truly overstepped themselves into illegal/unethical behavior.
There were no cops that issued or used a grand jury subpoena in this specific instance.
Luigi's Defense Counsel is asserting that the Prosecution Counsel issued a fradulent subpoena by way of sending Aetna a letter.
Yes, technically an officer of the court executes a subpoena directly issued by the judge in the course of ... dealing with some kind of misconduct pertaining to the actual proceeding of a case, thats true, that category exists and happens...
But I was responding to a specific comment that specifically cited a stack overflow link, which included many examples of... not that category.
Though the Prosecution acts as an officer of the court, the Prosecution are asserted by Defense to have simply made up that Judge/Clerk signed off on a subpoena to Aetna... and then the Prosecution, again, not being an officer of the court, fraudulently 'executed' that subpoena.
By my reading of New York criminal law, yes, a District Attorney may issue, as an officer of the court, a subpoena pertaining to an ongoing case... but they must also follow all the procedural rules as described in greater detail by New York civil law...
And in New York civil law, it is clearly explained that the Prosecution would have had to actually file that subpoena with the judge/clerk.
They did not do this, because if they had, the court date cited in the Prosecution's subpoena to Aetna... would have actually existed in the court's records.
It does not.
It’s also kind of different (in a legal not moral sense) to have police lie to an individual vs a lawyer lie to a company to steal medical record and violate hippa
Depends on the motivation. In both of these cases it allows the gov to put people in jail easier. So while different, they are probably the same from the probability perspective.
And to what end? What does his health insurance have that is evidence of the murder? Did he make a stop at the hospital right after or something, and make a claim to Aetna?
Exactly.
In the letter, Luigi's defense also notes that fucking none of that would be relevant to the case anyway.