NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty Friday to stalking UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a dramatic turning point in the high-profile case that started with the executive’s high-profile murder outside a Midtown hotel in the pre-dawn hours of December 2024.

The plea throws a wrench in Mangione’s parallel state prosecution scheduled for trial next month. Mangione’s lawyers are expected to argue that double jeopardy bars the state from moving forward.

It was not immediately clear what the move would mean in terms of Mangione’s overall exposure to prison time in the two cases. The federal offenses to which he is pleading guilty, stalking and surveilling Thompson with the intent to kill him, could put Mangione behind bars the rest of his life. There was no indication of any deal with the prosecution.

“The total maximum term for both of these crimes is life in prison,” Judge Margaret Garnett said.

Garnett further warned Mangione that if convicted in the state case he could end up serving consecutive sentences.

Wearing beige prison garb, Mangione was brought into the courtroom shackled at the wrists and ankles. When asked by Garnett if he he understood the consequences of pleading guilty, Mangione said he did and that he was clear minded and not under the influence of any drugs that might affect his judgment.

Garnett also asked Mangione if he understood he would not be able to withdraw the plea if he was unhappy with his sentence.

“Yes,” Mangione replied.

Thompson, 50, was fatally shot from behind outside an entrance to the Hilton hotel on Sixth Ave. as he arrived to set up for an investor conference in the early hours of Dec. 4, 2024. The killing touched off a broad debate about inequity in the U.S. healthcare industry, with throngs of Mangione supporters flocking to defend the killing.

Mangione publicly acknowledged his actions during a brief allocution.

“After years of enduring severe back pain, a broken back, navigating the obstacles of the health system, I learned that United Healthcare would be holding its annual investor conference in New York City,” Mangione told the court.

In the month before the shooting, he traveled to New York and emailed the company posing as an investor. “Unlike my previous conversations with insurers, I received an immediate response,” he said.

Mangione said he used a 3-D printer to make a gun equipped with a silencer and admitted that on Dec. 4 “I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan and he died.”

Members of Thompson’s family attended the hearing.

“Today’s guilty plea marks an important step toward justice for Brian and for our family,” the family said in a statement released after the hearing.

“While nothing will ease the pain of losing him, we are grateful that the federal justice system has held the person responsible for this heinous act accountable. Now we look to the court to ensure that sentencing reflects the severity of this crime. We remain mindful that additional proceedings in New York and Pennsylvania are still to come, and we will continue to seek the justice Brian deserves.”

The feds’ case alleges that Mangione had stalked the executive for weeks and laid out plans to kill him in a manifesto that lamented greed in the health insurance industry at the expense of everyday Americans’ well-being. Mangione, a garduate of the University of Pennsylvania, previously pleaded not guilty to the stalking offenses.

Mangione is not charged with taking Thompson’s life in the federal case, with Judge Garnett earlier this year dismissing the top count of murder through the use of a firearm as the other charges in the indictment did not sufficiently support it.

In the parallel state case, however, Mangione is charged with Thompson’s murder under New York State law in a case being tried by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which first filed charges in relation to the Midtown killing.

The trial in that case is scheduled to begin with jury selection on Sept. 8. Mangione has pleaded not guilty.

But if Garnett accepts Mangione’s plea, his lawyers are expected to try to get the state case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds. The DA’s office, expected to oppose such a move, previously said it would push Garnett to consider the threat a plea in the federal case would pose to the state prosecution and the wishes of Thompson’s family.

Under New York law, a person cannot be tried twice for the same conduct, barring limited exceptions, including distinctive elements of the separate charges intended to address very different types of “harm or evil.”

Mangione, 28, has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his 2024 arrest.

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