FILE PHOTO: Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealth Group chief executive Brian Thompson, appears in Manhattan Supreme Court on New York state murder and terrorism charges in New York City, U.S., February 21, 2025.
Curtis Means | Via Reuters
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday said she had ordered federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the case against Luigi Mangione for the December slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City.
“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 issued by the Department of Justice.
“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,” the attorney general said.
Karen Agnifilo, Mangione’s lawyer, condemned Bondi’s decision.
“By seeking to murder Luigi Mangione, the Justice Department has moved from the dysfunctional to the barbaric,” Agnifilo 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,” the attorney said.
“While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” Agnifilo said. “By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people.”
Bondi’s decision came more than two months after President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order calling for the restoration of use of the federal death penalty. That order directed the attorney general to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.”
The DOJ under the Biden administration had imposed a moratorium on federal executions since mid-2021.
In February, U.S. District Judge Katherine Parker appointed an attorney who is a death-penalty expert to Mangione’s legal team at the request of the Federal Defenders of New York, an independent organization that represents indigent defendants.
Mangione, 26, is being prosecuted in U.S. District Court in Manhattan with federal crimes, including murder, stalking, and firearms charges, related to Thompson’s killing outside the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4.
Thompson, whose company is the largest payer of health insurance benefits in the United States, was headed into the hotel for an investor meeting of its parent, UnitedHealth Group.
Mangione was apprehended five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where police found him in possession of a pistol, a silencer, ammunition, fake IDs and a U.S. passport.
Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
Courtesy: UnitedHealth Group
Mangione, who is being held without bail, has not yet entered a plea in federal cases.
He has pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges in Manhattan Supreme Court, which is a trial-level New York state court. He faces a maximum possible sentence of life without parole in that case if convicted. New York state does not have the death penalty.
The DOJ, in its statement Tuesday, said that Thompson’s “murder was an act of political violence.”
“Mangione’s actions involved substantial planning and premeditation and because the murder took place in public with bystanders nearby, may have posed grave risk of death to additional persons,” the statement said.
The department previously said that the University of Pennsylvania graduate planned to kill Thompson to spark public discussion about the health care industry.
Agnifilo, in her own statement, 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,” Agnifilo said.
Thirteen of the 16 people executed by the federal government since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988 were executed over the final seven months of Trump’s first term in office, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The other three executions were carried out in 2001 and 2003, during President George W. Bush’s first term.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in July 2021 imposed a moratorium on federal executions pending a review of DOJ policies and procedures, including “the risk of pain and suffering associated with the use of pentobarbital,” a drug used in lethal injection executions.
Former President Joe Biden on Dec. 23 commuted the death sentences of all but three of the 40 people in federal death row.
