Death penalty sought for Luigi Mangione, accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO, DOJ says

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Apr 1, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

NEW YORK — Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday said the Justice Department would seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione for the December killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the first sought since President Donald Trump’s return to power.

Bondi said the decision was in line with her Day 1 memo to DOJ staff outlining the department would revive the federal death penalty and lift a moratorium on executions implemented under President Joe Biden.

“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. 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,” Trump’s AG said in a statement.

Mangione’s lead defense attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, condemned the announcement in a statement.

“By seeking to murder Luigi Mangione, the Justice Department has moved from the dysfunctional to the barbaric. 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,” Friedman 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.”

Mangione, 26, has been charged in a federal complaint with murder through the use of a firearm, a death penalty-eligible crime, and other offenses for the fatal shooting on Dec. 4 outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, was arriving for an annual investor conference. He has not yet entered a plea to the charges as prosecutors have not yet filed an indictment, a charging document handed up by a grand jury.

On the state level, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has indicted Mangione on first-degree murder and terror offenses carrying the possibility of life without parole. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.

Mangione also faces lower-level charges in Pennsylvania related to a weapon and fake ID he allegedly possessed upon his arrest at a McDonald’s in Altoona following a five-day manhunt.

The Maryland man, an Ivy League computer science graduate, has received an outpouring of support from people frustrated with the expensive health care system in the United States. Authorities allege he carried a manifesto expressing his hostility toward the health insurance industry and that shell casings at the scene bore the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose,” in an apparent reference to the industry routinely denying claims to maximize profits.

Trump is a longtime supporter of capital punishment who advocated for drug traffickers to be put to death in his first term and famously called for the executions of five Black teenagers accused and ultimately exonerated of raping an investment banker who was jogging in Central Park.

After resuming office, he issued an executive order indicating his DOJ would forcefully pursue the death penalty wherever possible, particularly in cases involving the murder of a law enforcement officer and crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. It also said the federal government would resume executions for prisoners on death row.

Trump’s order came after President Biden converted the death sentences of 37 of 40 prisoners on death row to sentences of life without parole and after Biden in 2021 issued a pause on executions while a review of related DOJ policies was carried out. Biden campaigned on a promise of working to pass legislation to end capital punishment on the federal level, but he ultimately did not.

Should Mangione face a federal conviction, it will be jurors, not the feds, who will decide at a second trial whether he should be put to death. The effort could prove a challenge for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which in March 2023 failed to secure the death penalty against Sayfullo Saipov for killing eight people on a West Side bike path.

In that case, finding a panel of jurors unopposed to capital punishment took around five months, indicating Mangione’s federal trial could play out late into Trump’s second term.

_____