People v. Mangione, side by side

N.Y. Sup. Ct., New York Cty., Part 32 · Ind. No. 75657‑24 · S.D.N.Y. · No. 1:25‑cr‑00176

Side by Side Case Argumentation

1Was he prosecuted in federal court for the gun?

People

No. The two federal gun counts were thrown out in January, at his own request, more than six months before he pleaded. A charge that is gone before the plea was never “prosecuted,” so New York’s seven weapons counts can go ahead whatever happens to the murder count.

Defense

Yes. Under the statute he was prosecuted for anything charged in a case that ended in a guilty plea, and the federal case did. Nothing says he had to plead guilty to every count. The federal gun counts charged the same gun on the same morning as New York’s.

CourtUndecided. The motion is fully briefed, and Carro, J. has not ruled. The next appearance in Part 32 is December 10, 2026.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

People

The argument

New York’s law says a person “is prosecuted” for an offense when he “is charged therewith” and the case ends in a guilty plea. The People read the present tense literally: he has to still be charged with it when he pleads. “A mere charge is thus not enough to trigger double jeopardy.” They add that someone who gets a charge dismissed can be tried for it again, as long as the dismissal wasn’t a finding about guilt, and that a count that could never have led to a conviction never put him at risk at all.

Rests on

CPL 40.30(1), and the federal ruling of January 30, 2026, dismissing the two gun counts on his motion.

People’s brief at 12–15

Authority

Matter of Lockett v. Juviler, 65 N.Y.2d 182 (1985) (“an accused must suffer jeopardy … before he can suffer double jeopardy”); People v. Nuccio, 78 N.Y.2d 102 (1991); People v. Key, 45 N.Y.2d 111 (1978); People v. Aleynikov (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty. 2013).

Where it is weak

The statute also says the action has to end in a plea, and this one did. The case closest to these facts that the People cite, Aleynikov, is a trial-court decision, not a ruling that binds this court.

Defense

The argument

The statute asks only two things: that he was charged in a filed accusation, and that “the action” ended in a guilty plea. “[T]here is no requirement that the defendant plead guilty to every specific offense.” The federal gun counts and the state weapons counts are about one gun, the one in his backpack in Altoona, used that morning. In reply: “The statutory definition of being ‘prosecuted’ for an offense does not require that the defendant plead guilty to that specific offense.”

Rests on

CPL 40.30(1)(a); counts three and four of the federal indictment.

Defense affirmation ¶¶ 57–60, 78 · Defense reply at 2–3

Authority

The words of the statute. The motion cites no case on this point, and the People point that out.

Where it is weak

He is relying on counts he asked the federal court to throw out, and won. On the defense reading, a count dismissed at any stage would still block a state charge, so long as something else in the case later ended in a plea.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Was he still “charged” with the federal gun counts when the case ended in his plea?
People
No. They were dismissed in January. By August 14 they were gone.
People
The words “is charged” mean charged at the time of the plea.

Defense
What has to end in a plea is the action, and the action did.
Defense
Same gun, same morning, charged by both governments.
Where it lands
Undecided. If the People are right, the seven weapons counts are tried whatever happens to the murder count. If the defense is right, the People’s brief gives no other reason to keep them.

2Are federal stalking and New York murder aimed at very different harms?

People

Yes. As written, the stalking law is about crossing state lines or using electronics to frighten someone. Nothing in its definition needs a death or an intent to kill. The murder law is about intending to kill and killing. In the brief’s words, “different harms, different evils, different purposes, different crimes.”

Defense

No. Both laws exist to punish the unlawful taking of a life. He pleaded guilty to stalking that ended in a death, which carries life in prison. The travel and electronics “are not the evils or harms being prevented.”

CourtUndecided, and this is the heart of the motion. Both sides agree that each crime has an element the other lacks, which is the first half of the exception. Everything turns on this second half.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

People

The argument

The court has to compare the laws as written, not what he did. Written that way, everything in federal stalking is missing from murder: travel or an electronic “course of conduct,” an intent to “kill, injure, harass, or intimidate,” and a victim placed in reasonable fear. A murder can happen to someone who never saw it coming, and federal stalking can happen without anyone dying. The defense itself told the federal court that “the central purpose of the stalking statutes at issue here is to protect that person who is stalked [from] emotional distress or … reasonable fear.” The life sentence it points to sits in a separate penalty section, and many federal crimes carry life with nobody killed.

Rests on

18 U.S.C. § 2261A, the stalking law; Penal Law § 125.25(1), the murder law; the defense’s own federal brief, ECF No. 76.

People’s brief at 15–21

Authority

Matter of Kaplan v. Ritter, 71 N.Y.2d 222 (1987), on reading the laws and not the acts; People v. Bryant, 92 N.Y.2d 216 (1998); Matter of Robinson v. Snyder, 259 A.D.2d 280 (1st Dep’t 1999).

Where it is weak

The stalking law’s own list of intents starts with “kill,” and the counts he pleaded to were charged as stalking with intent to kill that ended in a death. Reading the laws “in the abstract” asks the court to look past that.

Defense

The argument

The bar is high. The law needs “very” different harms, and slight differences don’t count. When two laws both aim at “punishment for the unlawful taking of a particular human life,” the exception fails. Read with its penalty section, the stalking law punishes a death that results with “life or any terms of years,” the same as the federal murder count that was dismissed. And, the defense says, the federal government will ask for his sentence to be figured from the guideline for first-degree murder. In reply: “It is a statute that, like a state murder statute, is intended to keep people safe from being murdered — the oldest crime there is.” The travel, the electronics and the victim’s fear are “peripheral distinctions that do not go to the heart of the conduct being punished.”

Rests on

18 U.S.C. §§ 2261A and 2261(b)(1); the federal sentencing guidelines.

Defense affirmation ¶¶ 62–72 · Defense reply at 4–6

Authority

Matter of Wiley v. Altman, 52 N.Y.2d 410 (1981); Kaplan v. Ritter; People v. Manafort (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty. 2019).

Where it is weak

Its strongest material is in the penalty section and the sentencing guidelines, not in the definition of the crime, and the definition is what the court is told to compare. The People call that a single narrow overlap.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Were the two laws “designed to prevent very different kinds of harm or evil”? Judged by the laws as written, not by what he did.
People
Stalking’s elements are about fear and how it’s spread. Murder’s are about an intended death.
People
The death sits in a separate penalty section, not in the crime itself.

Defense
Read with its penalty, the stalking law punishes taking a life with life in prison.
Defense
Stalking someone with intent to kill, ending in his death, is the same “core misconduct” as murder.
Where it lands
Undecided, and it settles the murder count. If the People are right, he can be tried for murder in New York. If not, the murder count is dismissed.

3What does the January ruling that stalking is not a crime of violence prove?

People

That stalking and murder aim at different harms. The federal judge read the stalking law as written, the way New York’s test does, and found it needs no intent to cause a death and no use of force. The defense won that ruling by telling her the stalking law protects against fear.

Defense

Nothing about this question. “Crime of violence” is a narrow federal label. The ruling decided whether two federal counts could stand, not what the stalking law is for. Arson, kidnapping and even first-degree murder have failed the same test.

CourtUndecided. The motion is fully briefed, and Carro, J. has not ruled. The next appearance in Part 32 is December 10, 2026.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

People

The argument

The federal categorical approach ignores the facts and reads only the statute, which “parallels the ‘harm or evil’ inquiry” New York uses. Under it, Garnett, J. found that a stalker “need not intend or even know” the victim will be put in fear, and that a death “need not be foreseeable.” Her examples, like alarming messages that send a victim driving to a police station into a fatal crash, “bear no resemblance to the essential characteristics of second-degree murder.” The defense gave the federal court examples of its own like that. However “absurd” the inquiry is as a matter of federal law, the People say, it is the right one here.

Rests on

United States v. Mangione, 818 F. Supp. 3d 509 (S.D.N.Y. 2026), the January 30 ruling; the defense’s federal brief, ECF No. 76.

People’s brief at 21–23

Authority

Kaplan v. Ritter, 71 N.Y.2d at 229, which the People set beside the federal method.

Where it is weak

The two tests ask different things. The federal one asks whether a crime always involves force. New York’s asks what harm a law was written to prevent. A law can aim at preventing killings without force being one of its elements.

Defense

The argument

Garnett, J. was deciding whether two federal counts met their elements, not “defining the purpose of the federal stalking statute or what harm it was meant to prevent.” A crime can fail the crime-of-violence test and still be aimed at violence. She said so herself, calling the question an “apparent absurdity” and writing that “No one could seriously question that this is violent criminal conduct.” In reply: another federal judge found federal first-degree murder isn’t a crime of violence either, so by the People’s logic federal and state murder laws would aim at very different harms. “That cannot be.”

Rests on

The same January 30 ruling, at 515–16.

Defense affirmation ¶¶ 73–77 · Defense reply at 6–7

Authority

United States v. Ahemeid, 819 F. Supp. 3d 143 (E.D.N.Y. 2026), first-degree murder; United States v. Walker, 934 F.3d 375 (4th Cir. 2019), kidnapping; United States v. Lung’aho, 72 F.4th 845 (8th Cir. 2023), arson.

Where it is weak

The People are quoting the defense’s own January argument back at it: that the stalking law’s central purpose is protecting people from fear. The defense needed that to be true to take the death penalty off the table.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Does a federal ruling on what counts as a crime of violence tell a New York court what harm the stalking law was meant to prevent?
People
Both tests read the law, not the facts, so the answer carries over.
People
The ruling shows stalking needs neither an intent to kill nor force.

Defense
A crime can fail the federal test and still be aimed at violence. Murder has.
Defense
The ruling was about two federal counts, not about what the law is for.
Where it lands
Undecided. It’s the People’s strongest support, and it’s a ruling the defense asked for.

4Which earlier cases is this one like?

People

Cases where one episode broke two laws aimed at different things, and both prosecutions went ahead. A burglary and the stolen goods from it. A federal bank robbery and a state attempted murder of a police officer. The defense’s case was a conspiracy to murder, which holds the whole murder inside it.

Defense

Wiley v. Altman. A man prosecuted in Maryland for conspiring to commit a murder could not then be tried in New York for the murder, because both laws aimed at “the unlawful taking of a particular human life.” Where the harms are “generally similar,” the exception does not apply.

CourtUndecided. The motion is fully briefed, and Carro, J. has not ruled. The next appearance in Part 32 is December 10, 2026.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

People

The argument

In People v. Lanahan the court let burglary and possessing stolen property both go ahead over one theft, because burglary protects “the integrity of a residence.” Courts have refused only where the laws overlapped far more, like two boating-safety rules. Wiley involved a conspiracy that carried every element of the murder inside it, and the People say the law was later changed in response. Manafort involved state and federal fraud laws both written after the 2008 financial crisis, and nothing like that connects stalking and murder. The stalking law’s history points the same way. It started in the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, aimed at abusers who crossed state lines, then grew in 1996 to cover celebrity-style stalking of strangers, and later the internet. Every step was about fear.

Rests on

The legislative history of 18 U.S.C. § 2261A, from 1994 to 2013.

People’s brief at 24–31

Authority

People v. Lanahan, 276 A.D.2d 906 (3d Dep’t 2000); People v. Bryant, 92 N.Y.2d 216 (1998); Matter of McNerlin v. Argento, 173 A.D.3d 1646 (4th Dep’t 2019); People v. Claud, 76 N.Y.2d 951 (1990), the other way.

Where it is weak

The defense’s reply answers each one: in every case the People cite, the victim, the place, the time or the conduct differed between the two prosecutions. Here none of them does.

Defense

The argument

In Wiley the Maryland charge was conspiracy, not murder, but it allowed the same punishment as the murder it aimed at, life in prison. The Court of Appeals held both prosecutions “were directed at a like goal; punishment for the unlawful taking of a particular human life.” The same is true here: stalking that results in death also carries life. In Manafort, the court held the exception requires “a significant and meaningful difference in the types of harms addressed.” In reply it takes the People’s cases one by one. Lanahan’s burglaries happened on other nights in other places, and in Claud two quite different boating laws still counted as aimed at the same harm. “Every case allowing successive prosecution involved conduct that was different between the two prosecutions.”

Rests on

The Court of Appeals’ reasoning in Wiley, and Manafort, attached to the motion as Exhibit A.

Defense affirmation ¶¶ 63–68 · Defense reply at 7–9

Authority

Matter of Wiley v. Altman, 52 N.Y.2d 410 (1981); People v. Manafort (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty. 2019), affirmed, 187 A.D.3d 612 (1st Dep’t 2020); People v. Claud, 76 N.Y.2d 951 (1990), read the other way.

Where it is weak

Wiley leaned on what a conspiracy is. It takes in every act of the crime it aims at, so the overlap was nearly total. Stalking, the People say, does not take in a murder that way.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
In the closest past cases, did New York let the second prosecution go ahead?
People
Yes, whenever the two laws had different aims, even over one theft or one shooting.
People
Wiley was a conspiracy, which holds the whole murder inside it. Stalking doesn’t.

Defense
In Wiley both laws punished one taking of a life with life in prison. So do these.
Defense
The harms only need to be generally similar for the exception to fail.
Where it lands
Undecided. Neither side cites an earlier case that put federal stalking beside state murder, so the court has to choose which line of cases this belongs to.

5Did the District Attorney already admit the plea would end the case?

People

No. In February a prosecutor said the defense was delaying “hoping” the state case would be “jeopardied out” if the federal case went first. That describes the defense’s plan. It doesn’t agree the plan would work.

Defense

In effect, yes. For months the office pressed to go first because, in its own words, the defense was trying to “jeopardy [the state] out of the case.” In July it wrote that a federal plea “would operate to defeat a just outcome in the state prosecution.”

CourtUndecided. The motion is fully briefed, and Carro, J. has not ruled. The next appearance in Part 32 is December 10, 2026.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

People

The argument

The defense quotes the February 6 transcript as an admission. The full sentence, the People say, was that the defense was trying to delay the state case “hoping that if it goes after the federal case, by the New York statutory double jeopardy[, the state case] would be jeopardied out” (emphasis on “hoping” theirs). In June the prosecutor “simply pointed out that the defense was transparently seeking to manipulate the court’s calendar in order to manufacture a statutory double-jeopardy claim.” None of it was “anything like a concession.”

Rests on

The minutes of February 6 and June 3, 2026, attached to the People’s affirmation.

People’s brief at 31–32

Authority

None needed. It’s a question of what was said.

Where it is weak

The office fought hard and openly to try the case first. Whatever its prosecutors believed about the law, the effort makes most sense if they thought going second could cost them the case.

Defense

The argument

On February 6 the office argued the defense was trying to “jeopardy [the state] out of the case,” and the judge moved the trial up to June 8, saying the federal government had “reneged on their agreement to allow the state that did most of the work in this case to go first.” On June 3 defense counsel said the People were “desperate” to go first, and the office didn’t dispute it. On July 2 it wrote that a federal plea “would operate to defeat a just outcome in the state prosecution.”

Rests on

The transcripts of February 6 and June 3, 2026, and the People’s letter of July 2, 2026.

Defense affirmation ¶¶ 28–34

Authority

None needed. It’s a question of what was said.

Where it is weak

A prosecutor worrying that a defense might work is not the same as agreeing that it does. And even a real concession on the law wouldn’t bind the judge, who has to decide the statute’s meaning for himself.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Did anything the District Attorney’s office said amount to agreeing that a federal plea bars the state case?
People
No. Its prosecutors described what the defense was hoping for and objected to it.
People
Describing the defense’s plan isn’t endorsing it.

Defense
An office doesn’t race to go first unless it thinks going second loses.
Defense
Its own letter said a federal plea would defeat the state case.
Where it lands
Undecided, and probably not decisive. What the statute means is the judge’s question, whatever either side said along the way.

6Did the two prosecutions together deny him due process?

People

No. Two governments may each prosecute the same act, and their prosecutors may talk about scheduling. The state went first on its own timetable. The defense it says he lost was extreme emotional disturbance, which was “doomed to fail” anyway, and he withdrew it himself.

Defense

Yes. The two offices “cut a deal” for the state to go first. That forced a choice: raise a defense that exists only in New York and admit facts the federal prosecutors would use, or give it up. Acting together, they were a single government trying him twice.

CourtUndecided. The motion is fully briefed, and Carro, J. has not ruled. The next appearance in Part 32 is December 10, 2026.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

People

The argument

The claim is “nothing more than a masked double-jeopardy argument.” A due process claim needs either unfair procedure or conduct that “shock[s] the contemporary conscience,” and talking about scheduling is neither. The Justice Department’s long-standing “Petite” policy tells federal prosecutors to weigh a state case already underway. In April 2025 the federal prosecutor told his court that his office would proceed “in our normal course.” In June 2026 the judge only warned that, without a proper notice, the defense was “coming close to not being able to put forth” extreme emotional disturbance, and the defense withdrew its notice instead of fixing it. “The evidence in this case incontrovertibly establishes that this was a long-premeditated and well-choreographed killing.” If he regrets his federal plea, that is for the federal court.

Rests on

The People’s affirmation of October 9 and its exhibits: minutes of April 25, 2025, and January 9, January 30 and June 17, 2026.

People’s brief at 32–40

Authority

Reed v. Goertz, 598 U.S. 230 (2023); Charles v. Orange County, 925 F.3d 73 (2d Cir. 2019); United States v. Aboumoussallem, 726 F.2d 906 (2d Cir. 1984); People v. Harrison, 212 A.D.3d 651 (2d Dep’t 2023).

Where it is weak

Its answer that the defense was “doomed to fail” is the People’s own view of a defense no court has heard. And the defense quotes the state court itself moving the trial up because the federal government had “reneged” on an agreement about who would go first.

Defense

The argument

“In a word, the District Attorney’s Office and the Justice Department cut a deal.” Because the state went first, he faced “an intractable constitutional dilemma”: to use the defense New York offers, which can reduce murder to manslaughter, he would have had to admit facts the federal prosecutors would use to convict him, and the court required him to lay out that defense in detail before trial. “We are unaware of a single other case with this combination of circumstances in the history of prosecutions in this country.” The reply adds nothing on due process: it “relies on the arguments made in Mangione’s opening brief.”

Rests on

The scheduling record from January to June 2026; a federal press release of December 19, 2024, thanking the state office for its “separate prosecution” expected to go first.

Defense affirmation ¶¶ 39–47 · Defense reply at 9

Authority

Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97 (1934); Lisenba v. California, 314 U.S. 219 (1941); Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197 (1977). The motion invokes the Fifth Amendment; the People say the Fourteenth is the one that applies to a state.

Where it is weak

It cites no case finding a due process violation on facts like these, and says so: it knows of none. Under the rule of dual sovereignty the Constitution’s own double jeopardy clause doesn’t stop two governments prosecuting the same act, and the defense doesn’t argue otherwise. That is why its claim has to run through due process at all.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Was the way the two cases were run so unfair that it denied him due process?
People
Two governments may each prosecute, and may talk about timing. Nothing here shocks the conscience.
People
He had a year and a half to raise the defense, and withdrew it.

Defense
Raising it meant handing the federal prosecutors his case.
Defense
Two offices that plan a defendant’s prosecutions together are acting as one.
Where it lands
Undecided. If the defense wins this alone, counts three through ten are dismissed whatever the court finds on the statute.

Back to the case

Notes

How this was made, and what it leaves out

Source

The federal case is built from its own docket, No. 1:25‑cr‑00176 (MMG), read in full through the archive of PACER filings. Every federal citation on this page is an ECF No. and can be pulled from that docket. The two January opinions are quoted from the filed text.

The state indictment is quoted from the signed copy published by the District Attorney’s office, and the August 17 scheduling order from the copy filed in Part 32 — both in full, both short. The People’s October 9 response is quoted from the copy Courthouse News published.

The two state decisions that matter most — the September 2025 omnibus decision and the May 2026 suppression decision — are summarized here from contemporaneous reporting of them, with one quoted passage from the first. That is a weaker chain than the rest of the page and is marked as such below.

What is not here yet

The People answered the double jeopardy motion on October 9, 2026, and the defense replied at the end of the month. The Side by Side View sets the two side by side, each quoted from its own papers. The defense reply is quoted from the court-stamped copy LA Magazine published.

New York County Supreme Court has no public docket of the kind PACER provides, so the state record here is not a complete list of filings in the way the federal one is. Where a state filing is described, it is because a copy or a reliable account of it is public — not because the docket was read end to end. Assume the state side is less complete than the federal side, because it is.

The Pennsylvania case is noted once and then dropped. It has never been tried and nothing in it bears on the question this page is about.

The victim, and the inference

Brian Thompson was fifty, and had a wife and two sons. The case is interesting for reasons of statutory construction, and a page organized around statutory construction can quietly turn a killing into a puzzle. He is named here every time the record names him, and the one thing nobody in any of these courtrooms has disputed since August 14, 2026, is how he died.

One reading on this page is an inference rather than a fact: that the open plea was entered to trigger the state double jeopardy bar. Neither side has said so on the record. It is marked as an inference where it appears, and it is the only place this page reasons about motive.

What this is not

Not legal advice, not a finding, and not a verdict. He has been convicted of two federal stalking offenses by his own plea and has not been tried for murder by anybody. The state counts are allegations and remain allegations, and the question of whether they can be tried at all is undecided by the only person who gets to decide it. Where the record does not reach, this page says so and stops.

Tell me what I got wrong

If something here is missed, misrepresented or unfairly portrayed, let me know. Point me at a filing or record and I will verify it on my end. I actively look to correct, improve and remain unbiased.

No account, no name, no email. The submission stores what you typed, your address and your browser string, to make abuse traceable and for nothing else.

Record reviewed through November 8, 2026. Both cases are live: the federal one awaits sentence on December 18, and the state one awaits a decision on a motion both sides have now briefed. This page will be wrong in some particular within weeks, which is the condition of writing about a case while it is still happening.

Terms

Plain English

Words this page uses because the courts use them. Nothing here is special to this case.

The paperwork

Docket: The court’s numbered list of everything filed in a case. Entry 42 is the forty-second thing filed.
ECF No.: How a federal filing is cited: its docket number. A number after a dash, like 59-2, is an attachment to it — usually an exhibit.
Indictment: The document a grand jury returns to start a felony prosecution. It lists the charges and nothing else; it is not evidence of anything.
Count: One charged offense. An indictment with eleven counts charges eleven separate offenses, and a jury answers for each one separately.
Grand jury: A panel that hears the prosecution’s evidence in secret and decides whether there is enough to charge. It does not decide guilt.
Transcript: The word-for-word record of a hearing. Cited by page and line, so 12:7 means page 12, line 7.
Under seal: Filed with the court but kept off the public record. Both sides and the judge can read it; nobody else can.

How a case moves

Arraignment: The hearing where a defendant is formally told the charges and enters a plea to them.
Motion: A formal request that the court do something. The other side files an opposition or response; the moving side may then reply.
Suppression: Keeping evidence out of a trial because of how it was obtained. The evidence may be entirely genuine; the question is only whether the police were entitled to get it that way.
Inventory search: A search of a detained person’s property to log what is in it, done to a standard procedure rather than to look for evidence. Lawful without a warrant, which is why the procedure itself gets litigated.
Miranda warnings: The caution police must give before questioning someone in custody. Answers given before it are generally inadmissible; answers to routine booking or safety questions generally are not affected.
Voir dire: The questioning of prospective jurors before a trial, to decide who sits on it.
Interlocutory appeal: An appeal taken in the middle of a case, before final judgment, usually only where a statute allows it.
Presentence report: An investigation by the probation office, ordered after conviction, that the judge reads before sentencing.
Learned counsel: A lawyer experienced in death penalty cases, appointed at public expense whenever a federal case is capital. Required by statute, not discretionary — so the appointment arriving and being withdrawn marks when a case was and was not capital.
Primary jurisdiction: Which of two governments holding claims on the same defendant gets to deal with him first. It usually follows who arrested him.
Rule 600: Pennsylvania’s speedy-trial rule. It normally requires trial within a year of the complaint, but time a defendant is unavailable does not count against it.

Pleas

Open plea: A guilty plea entered with no agreement from the prosecution — no charge concessions, no sentencing recommendation. The defendant gives up the trial and keeps none of the usual consideration for it.
Plea agreement: The usual arrangement: a plea in exchange for something, normally dropped charges or a position on sentence. There was none here.

The tests in this case

Double jeopardy: The bar on being prosecuted twice for the same offense. New York’s statutory version is broader than the Fifth Amendment’s and reaches across sovereigns.
Dual sovereignty: The doctrine that a state and the federal government are separate sovereigns, so a prosecution by each for the same conduct is not the same offense under the Fifth Amendment.
Criminal transaction: Conduct closely connected enough in time and purpose to count as one episode. New York’s double jeopardy statute works on transactions, not just on single acts — which is why the date on a count matters.
Element: One of the separate things a prosecutor has to prove for a particular crime. If one is missing, the charge fails.
CPL 40.20: The section of New York’s Criminal Procedure Law that holds the state’s double jeopardy rule. Its second part bars a second prosecution over the same act or criminal transaction, and then lists the exceptions.
Crime of violence: For these statutes, a felony that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another.
Predicate offense: An offense that another, more serious charge is built on top of. If the predicate fails as a matter of law, the charge built on it fails with it.
Categorical approach: A method that ignores what the defendant actually did and asks only whether the offense, as written, always requires force — judged by the least serious conduct the statute could cover.
Legally insufficient: The evidence put before the grand jury, taken at its best, could not establish an element of the charge. The count goes without any finding about whether the defendant did it.
Armed felony: A New York classification attaching to certain offenses committed with a loaded weapon. It restricts what sentence and what plea are available.