Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that federal prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who was accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a New York City hotel in December.
Bondi said in a statement that her decision was in line with a Day One memorandum she issued directing the Justice Department to revive and expand the use of the federal death penalty after the Biden administration’s DOJ put a moratorium on it.
“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. “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.”
Mangione, 26, is facing a slate of state and federal murder charges after authorities say he approached Thompson as he was en route to a company conference on the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, and shot him several times.
Mangione fled the scene, and law enforcement officers arrested him five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, according to surveillance footage and court documents.
Mangione was in possession of the pistol he allegedly used to kill Thompson, as well as a notebook that contained “several handwritten pages that [expressed] hostility towards the health insurance industry” and a note describing Mangione’s intent to “wack” an insurance executive, according to a complaint.
Mangione was valedictorian of his preparatory school in Maryland before earning degrees in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. The reason for his life’s turn from a driven college graduate to targeting a top health insurance company remains under scrutiny in the courts. Mangione has been detained in New York while he awaits trial, though a date has not yet been set.
Bondi’s announcement that prosecutors would ask for a death sentence for Mangione marks the first time the Trump administration has expressed that it will seek the execution of a defendant following Trump’s vow when he took office to use it aggressively.
LUIGI MANGIONE COURT DATE POSTPONED AS HIS LAWYERS QUESTION EVIDENCE
No federal executions had been carried out since 2003 before the first Trump administration. In Trump’s final two months in office during his last term, his administration carried out 13. Former President Joe Biden, who opposed the death penalty, commuted sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row just before leaving office.
Mangione’s defense attorney Karen Agnifilo accused the DOJ of making a politicized decision that defies court precedent in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. Agnifilo said that by “seeking to murder” her client, the DOJ has moved “from the dysfunctional to the barbaric.”
“By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people,” Agnifilo said. “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. 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.”
