Luigi Mangione Case Glossary — Court Terms Explained

Arraignment: A court appearance at which a defendant is formally told the charges and enters a plea.
Capital case: A prosecution in which the law allows a death sentence as the maximum punishment. A charge is called capital-eligible when it carries that possibility.
CJTN: Criminal Justice Tracking Number — an identifier New York State assigns to a criminal case so agencies across the state can track it.
Complaint (criminal): A charging document, sworn out by police or a prosecutor, that begins a criminal case by stating the alleged offenses. In many courts a complaint is later replaced by an indictment.
Count: One charged offense within a charging document. A single indictment or complaint can contain many counts.
Crime of violence: A category in federal law covering offenses that involve the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force. Some federal charges apply only when another offense qualifies as a crime of violence.
Docket: A court's chronological list of the filings and actions in a case.
Extradition: The formal process of transferring a person from one state or country to another to face charges there.
Extreme emotional disturbance: A partial defense under New York law: when a jury finds an intentional killing was committed under an extreme emotional disturbance for which there was a reasonable explanation, the offense is reduced from second-degree murder to manslaughter.
Habeas corpus: A court process for testing whether a person's detention is lawful. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus asks a judge to require the custodian to justify the detention.
Indictment: A formal charge issued by a grand jury. In felony cases it is the charging document that carries the prosecution forward.
Jury selection (voir dire): The stage at which prospective jurors are questioned by the court and the parties so an impartial jury can be seated. "Voir dire" is the traditional name for that questioning.
MDJ docket: The docket of a Pennsylvania Magisterial District Judge, the local court where a Pennsylvania criminal case begins before it moves to the Court of Common Pleas.
Minute entry: A short docket notation recording what happened at a proceeding, without a full transcript or a written order.
Motion in limine: A request, made close to trial, asking the court to admit or exclude particular evidence before it is mentioned in front of the jury.
Motion to suppress: A request asking the court to exclude specific evidence from trial, usually on the ground that it was obtained unlawfully.
Omnibus motion: A single filing that bundles several pretrial requests — challenges to the charges, requests about evidence — so the court can rule on them together.
OTN: Offense Tracking Number — an identifier Pennsylvania assigns to a set of charges so they can be tracked across the state's court system.
Rule 600 (Pennsylvania speedy-trial rule): The Pennsylvania rule that sets time limits for bringing a criminal case to trial. Delay attributable to the defense, or outside the prosecution's control, is excluded from the count.
Second-degree murder (New York): In New York, murder in the second degree is the standard charge for an intentional killing; murder in the first degree is limited to killings with specific statutory aggravating circumstances.
Status conference: A court appearance at which the judge and the parties review where the case stands and plan the next steps.
Suppression: The exclusion of evidence from a trial after a court grants a motion to suppress.
WebCrim: The New York State court system's public lookup for criminal case information. New York criminal courts post no filings online, so appearance and charge details are checked there.
Writ ad prosequendum: A court order directing that a person held in one jurisdiction's custody be produced in another jurisdiction to face proceedings there.