Attorney general Pam Bondi is asking federal prosecutors to seek the harshest punishment available for Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson: the death penalty.
“After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” Bondi said in a statement on Tuesday.
Mangione faces four federal charges related to the shooting. One of those charges, murder through use of a firearm, carries the possibility of the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Bondi justified the decision, alleging that Mangione “stalked and murdered” Thompson and committed the crime as an “act of political violence.” She said because the killing took place in the middle of New York City in broad daylight the alleged shooter “may have posted grave risk of death to additional persons.”
Capital punishment is the most serious punishment that can be imposed under federal law. Those sentenced to federal death row have typically been convicted of mass murder, large-scale drug trafficking, treason, espionage or other serious crimes.
There are currently only three inmates on federal death row: Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 people in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting; Dylan Roof, a white supremacist who murdered nine people in the Charleston church shooting; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who killed three people and injured hundreds of others in the Boston Marathon bombing.
While federal death row is relatively rare and controversial, President Donald Trump has directed Bondi to pursue the death penalty “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.”
Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Mangione's lawyer, branded the decision “barbaric.”
“By seeking to murder Luigi Mangione, the Justice Department has moved from the dysfunctional to the barbaric,” she said in a statement.
“Their decision to execute Luigi is political and goes against the recommendation of the local federal prosecutors, the law, and historical precedent. While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi. By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people.
“We are prepared to fight these federal charges, brought by a lawless Justice Department, as well as the New York State charges, and the Pennsylvania charges, and anything else they want to pile on Luigi.”
She added: “This is a corrupt web of government dysfunction and one-upmanship. Luigi 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.”
Mangione also faces a slew of state charges for the killing, which carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. Prosecutors have said the two cases will proceed on parallel tracks, with the state charges expected to go to trial first. It isn’t immediately clear if Bondi’s death penalty announcement will change the order of how the cases are tried, according to the Associated Press.
Mangione’s case has made international headlines as he garnered sympathy from people across the nation who have characterized him as a folk hero.
From the beginning, the investigation into Thompson’s murder sparked interest due to the peculiar nature of the crime.
The UnitedHealthcare CEO was murdered in the morning in midtown Manhattan, but the masked shooter managed to escape, sending police across several states on a days-long manhunt. Eventually, a McDonald’s employee in Pennsylvania recognized Mangione and turned him in.
A deep dive into Mangione’s life revealed he was disgruntled with the health insurance system in the United States, sparking a nationwide conversation about the practices of health insurance companies.
