Mangione's "Learned Counsel"
Death penalty specialist Avi Moskowitz joins Luigi Mangione's legal team
Last week, a magistrate judge appointed Avraham Moskowitz to Luigi Mangione’s legal team as one of two lawyers Mangione is entitled to as an indicted defendant in a federal case potentially involving the death penalty1.
So who is Avi Moskowitz and what does he bring to this case?
I suspect many readers may be too young to remember the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people and injured upwards of a thousand people. The man responsible for this act of terror was a Pakistani man named Ramzi Yusef, who managed to evade capture for two years following the attack and participate in several more terrorist plots. To say Yusef’s subsequent trial was one of the biggest legal stories of the 90s would be an understatement.
A young Avi Moskowitz was Yousef’s court-appointed lawyer. Although Business Insider and other outlets have made much of Moskowitz’s representation of Ramzi Yousef, the fact is that he only represented Yousef for a very short period of time—days, actually. In February 1995, Yousef’s new lawyer, Ray Kulcsar, told UPI that Yousef had asked for a new lawyer, “not because Moskowitz was Jewish but because he is active in Israeli causes.” Kulscar is Roman Catholic. (Interestingly, Yousef later converted to Christianity while in prison.) Moskowitz wouldn’t comment, except to tell UPI that Kulscar’s comments were “inaccurate.”
The Yousef trial really tells us nothing about Moskowitz and is mainly just trivia the media used last week to capture the attention of readers. So what do we know?
While Moskowitz’s own bio suggests he mainly practices white collar criminal defense and litigation having to do with civil rights violations and child abuse, his background encompasses an eclectic range of criminal defense experience.
One of his most important former roles was his six-year stint as Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, the same court that is prosecuting the Mangione case. At that time he was focused mainly on criminal defense and commercial litigation. However, Moskowitz is far from the only lawyer in New York that can boast of these credentials and areas of expertise.
Only a few, however, can say they helped a client avoid the death penalty in a capital case gone to verdict (United States vs. Quiones and Rodriguez).
This case is worth looking at more closely, as it helps put Moskowitz’s appointment to Mangione’s defense team into context.
Alan Quiones and Diego Rodriguez2 were alleged to have been involved in a drug-related murder in the Bronx in 1999. According to prosecutors, the men tortured and murdered a government informant before burning the victim’s body and abandoning it in an empty lot.
The federal government charged the men with murder in aid of racketeering, a federal offense that was death-penalty eligible. Over the objections of the U.S. Attorney for the district, the Attorney General chose to seek the death penalty for both men.
Even before the trial started, Avi Moskowitz and the other lawyers on the Quiones-Rodriguez defense teams filed a motion to strike the possibility of a death penalty punishment upon potential conviction on the grounds that the act under which the death penalty had been made legal was itself unconstitutional.
At issue in this case is whether the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Defendants Alan Quinones and Diego Rodriguez pleaded not guilty to the underlying charges in a narcotics/murder case. Trial for those charges was scheduled to begin on Sept. 2, 2002, and the federal government was requesting the death penalty upon conviction. The defendants filed a motion to strike the death penalty notices on the ground that the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 is unconstitutional. In April 2002, the District Court held that the federal death-penalty statute was unconstitutional in light of the risk of executing innocent persons. The federal government appealed to the Second Circuit.
Judge Jed Rakoff agreed with Moskowitz and the rest of the defendants’ legal teams and found the federal death penalty unconstitutional because “it created an undue risk of execution of innocent people.”
Subsequently, the U.S. Court of Appeals (Second Circuit) reversed Rakoff’s decision, and the Quinones-Rodriguez trial moved forward with the death penalty on the table.
Though the men were found guilty, the jury was convinced by the closing arguments of Quinones and Rodriguez’s legal teams to sentence the men to life in prison, thus the death penalty was avoided. In addition, that successful pre-trial motion has become an exceedingly important legal document, studied by scholars and lawyers all over the country interested in challenging the legality of the federal death penalty.
Moskowitz’s role in Rodriguez’s defense is not clear. He worked with Jean Barrett of Ruhnke & Barrett and Don Buchwald of Buchwald & Kaufman, and I have been unable to find press coverage of Moskowitz’s specific efforts and contributions to this case, save for a mention in this New York Law Journal article covering the verdict. This may only mean that Moskowitz didn’t present the closing arguments but instead worked on other matters having to do with the case.
More relevant to the Mangione case is this interesting reflection from Quinones’ defense attorney, Lee Ginsburg:
“The case was important because it was only the second time since the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg that a federal jury in Manhattan has been asked to impose the death penalty. But it’s also important because we have every reason to believe that this was a case in which the attorney general overrode the U.S. attorney for the Southern District and decided to seek the death penalty.”
The parallels to the Mangione case are obvious, and provides helpful context for Moskowitz’s appointment.
The Quinones-Rodriguez case may be one of Moskowitz’s best-known cases, but he has ample experience defending individual accused of capital crimes. According to his own bio, he has “successfully represented more than fifty clients charged with capital crimes in the federal courts of New York.”
That euphemistic language suggests that the majority of these cases ended in a plea. In fact, most federal capital cases end in pleas before verdicts are rendered. However, as we’ve just seen, Moskowitz is one of just a few attorneys in New York who have helped a client avoid the death penalty in a capital case gone to verdict.
There’s been some confusion about Moskowitz’s role on Mangione’s legal team. He is not paid by Mangione for his services. He is paid by the federal government. That’s because every indicted defendant in a federal, death-penalty eligible case has the right to the appointment of two lawyers in addition to whatever legal team he hires.
One of those lawyers must be a “learned counsel.” As defined in 18 U.S.C. § 3005, learned counsel in a death-eligible criminal case is someone who is “learned in the law applicable to capital cases” and who have “distinguished prior experience in the trial, appeal, or post-conviction review of federal dath penalty cases.”
Note the inclusion of “appeal” and “post-conviction review.” This suggests that Moskowitz’s role is not just to help Mangione avoid the death penalty (and perhaps even aid in a pre-trial motion to take the death penalty off the table, similar to what he did in the Quinones-Rodriguez case), but to assist in post-conviction legal activities, should they be necessary.
Here are a two cases in Moskowitz’s background I found particularly fascinating in the context of his role on Mangione’s team:
He represented a corporate executive who had been indicted on charges of securities fraud and managed to convince the government to allow his client to plead to much lesser charge. Of course, Brian Thompson was facing accusations of insider trading and fraud when he was killed.
Got extortion charges against a corporate executive (organized crime indictment) dismissed.
Should be some interesting conversations between Moskowitz and his client, I imagine.
Note: I am currently working to get the legal details and specifics of these two cases for you and will update the post with links when I have them.
The novelist in me is totally intrigued by the idea of Luigi Mangione being represented and advocated for by a lawyer who has aided CEOs and corporate executives in avoiding punishment for their bad behavior. I suppose when a man’s trying to save your life, you don’t stop to administer a purity test.
Still, to be a fly on the wall…
News of Moskowitz’s appointment renewed interest in Mangione’s defense fund, which, until last week, had not been touched. In fact, it was not even known if Mangione would accept the funds to pay for his defense. Donations soared to more than $300,000 by the end of last week, and Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Agnifilio, announced that her client would, in fact, be utilizing those funds. Over the weekend, donations continued to come in, but though Fortune reported that the fund had raised more than $500,000, in fact the fund currently sits at $360,000 as of 2/12/25.
Moskowitz was defending Rodriguez only.
Thank you for taking your time to write and update us, friend!!! + for not using confusing jargon <3