An indictment is the formal accusation a grand jury returns; it does not prove guilt, it states the counts the state must prove at trial. The People allege Mangione shot Thompson outside a Midtown hotel on December 4, 2024, then fled the city before being arrested in Pennsylvania five days later.
As first returned, the indictment charged the killing two ways — as an ordinary second-degree murder and as murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism — plus weapons possession and forgery counts tied to the pistol and false identification. In September 2025 the court dismissed the two terrorism counts, and a later ruling trimmed a magazine-related charge.
What remains is a nine-count instrument led by second-degree murder. That is the count the September trial will center on, and the one the defense’s extreme-emotional-disturbance theory is designed to reduce.
Mangione faces this state indictment in Manhattan and a separate federal prosecution that can carry the death penalty. The two run on parallel tracks; the federal trial has been reset to January 2027 so it does not overlap the state murder trial scheduled to begin in September 2026.