U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson. This move fulfills President Donald Trump's campaign promise to vigorously pursue the death penalty. It marks the first time the Justice Department has sought the death penalty since Trump's return to the presidency in January, after he vowed to reinstate federal executions.
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04-05, 2025Bondi's decision to do so in the high-profile Mangione case underscores her commitment to carrying out the president's push for more death penalty cases. Mangione has attracted a following of supporters who are disgruntled with the healthcare industry. Trump executed federal prisoners at an unprecedented rate at the end of his first term and has been an outspoken proponent of expanding the death penalty.
Bondi's order comes weeks after she lifted a moratorium on federal executions implemented by the administration of former 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 the conscience of the nation," Bondi said in a statement. She described Thompson's killing as "an act of political violence."
Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, is accused of shooting Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last December as UnitedHealth Group prepared to hold an investor conference there. Thompson, who was 50 years old and had two high school-aged children, had worked for UnitedHealth Group and its parent company for decades. Mangione faces both federal and state murder charges, and the incident sent shockwaves through the business community while also fueling criticism of health insurance companies.
The federal charges include murder with a firearm, which carries a potential death penalty. The state charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the state indictment and has not yet entered a plea on the federal charges. Prosecutors have said that the two cases will proceed in parallel, with the state case expected to go to trial first. It is unclear whether Bondi's announcement will change that order.
Thompson's killing rattled the corporate world, with some health insurance companies scrambling to shift to remote work or online shareholder meetings. The case also reflects the discontent some Americans feel toward health insurance companies. Authorities said that writings and utterances by Mangione found on bullets at the scene reflected a loathing for health insurers and corporate America.
Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind. Police said the ammunition was scrawled with words such as "delay," "deny," and "deprive," mimicking phrases often used to describe tactics insurance companies employ to avoid paying claims. After a five-day manhunt, Mangione was apprehended in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 370 kilometers west of New York City.
Police said Mangione was carrying a 9mm handgun matching the one used in the shooting, along with other items, including a fake ID and a notebook authorities described as a "manifesto" in which they said he expressed animus toward the health insurance industry and wealthy executives. Prosecutors said entries in the notebook included one from August 2024 that read "Target insurance" because "it fits all the criteria," and another from October describing an intent to "off" an insurance company CEO.
UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer in the United States, has said that Mangione was never a customer of theirs. Mangione's lawyer, Karen Friedman-Agnifilo, has said she will seek to suppress some of the evidence seized during his arrest. She has also objected to the parallel prosecutions, accusing "warring jurisdictions" of turning Mangione into "a human ping pong ball."
Following his arrest, Mangione was swiftly transported back to New York by plane and helicopter, walking slowly onto a Manhattan pier in a carefully choreographed scene involving a phalanx of officers carrying assault rifles and a contingent that included New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office on January 20, directing the Justice Department to seek the death penalty in applicable federal cases. The Trump administration carried out 13 federal executions during his first term, more than any president in modern history.
Biden campaigned on a promise to work to abolish the federal death penalty but took no major steps to do so. While Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021, Biden's Justice Department also actively worked to uphold death sentences for condemned prisoners in numerous cases. In the final weeks of his term, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life in prison.
The remaining three prisoners are Dylann Roof, who murdered nine Black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in a 2015 racist massacre; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the perpetrator of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Robert Bowers, who shot and killed 11 congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
