Federal prosecutors to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione in
UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing
[April 02, 2025]
By MICHAEL R. SISAK and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday that she
has directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Luigi
Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson,
following through on the president's campaign promise to vigorously
pursue capital punishment.
It is the first time the Justice Department has sought to bring the
death penalty since President Donald Trump returned to office in January
with a vow to resume federal executions after they were halted under the
previous administration.
“Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father
of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination
that shocked America,” Bondi said in a statement. She described
Thompson’s killing as “an act of political violence.”
Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland
real estate family, faces separate federal and state murder charges
after authorities say he gunned down Thompson, 50, outside a Manhattan
hotel on Dec. 4 as the executive arrived for UnitedHealthcare’s annual
investor conference.
Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, said Tuesday that in seeking
the death penalty “the Justice Department has moved from the
dysfunctional to the barbaric.”
Mangione “is caught in a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between state
and federal prosecutors, except the trophy is a young man’s life,”
Friedman Agnifilo said in a statement, vowing to fight all charges
against him.
The killing and ensuing five-day manhunt leading to Mangione's arrest
rattled the business community, with some health insurers hastily
switching to remote work or online shareholder meetings. It also
galvanized health insurance critics — some of whom have rallied around
Mangione as a stand-in for frustrations over coverage denials and hefty
medical bills.
Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind.
Police say the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were scrawled on the
ammunition, mimicking a phrase commonly used to describe insurer tactics
to avoid paying claims.
Mangione's federal charges include murder through use of a firearm,
which carries the possibility of the death penalty. The state charges
carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. Mangione has pleaded not
guilty to a state indictment and has not yet been required to enter a
plea on the federal charges.
Prosecutors have said the two cases will proceed on parallel tracks,
with the state case expected to go to trial first. It wasn't immediately
clear if Bondi's announcement will change the order.
[to top of second column]
|
Luigi Mangione , accused of fatally shooting the UnitedHealthcare
CEO Brian Thompson in New York City and leading authorities on a
five-day search is scheduled, appears in court for a hearing,
Friday, Feb. 21, 2025, in New York. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via
AP, Pool, File)
Mangione was arrested Dec. 9 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230
miles (about 370 kilometers) west of New York City and whisked to
Manhattan by plane and helicopter.
Police said Mangione had a 9mm handgun that matched the one used in
the shooting and other items including a notebook in which they say
he expressed hostility toward the health insurance industry and
wealthy executives.
Among the entries, prosecutors said, was one from August 2024 that
said “the target is insurance” because “it checks every box” and one
from October that describes an intent to “wack” an insurance company
CEO. UnitedHealthcare, the largest U.S. health insurer, has said
Mangione was never a client.
Mangione's lawyer has said she would seek to suppress some of the
evidence.
Former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department filed the federal
case against Mangione but left it to Trump and his administration to
decide whether to seek the death penalty. Because the federal case
had been taking a backseat to the state case, federal prosecutors
have yet to seek a grand jury indictment, which is required for
capital cases.
Trump oversaw an unprecedented run of 13 executions at the end of
his first term and has been an outspoken proponent of expanding
capital punishment. Trump signed an executive order on his first day
back in office on Jan. 20 that compels the Justice Department to
seek the death penalty in federal cases where applicable.
Bondi’s order comes weeks after she lifted a Biden-era moratorium on
federal executions.
Biden campaigned on a pledge to work toward abolishing federal
capital punishment but took no major steps to that end. While
Attorney General Merrick Garland halted federal executions in 2021,
Biden's Justice Department at the same time fought vigorously to
maintain the sentences of death row inmates in many cases.
In his final weeks in office, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of
the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to
life in prison.
The three inmates that remain are Dylann Roof, who carried out the
2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME
Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11
congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the
deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
