C&P Newswire
Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, who stands accused of the December 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Thompson was fatally shot outside a hotel in New York while en route to an annual investor meeting.
“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 on Tuesday.
Mangione faces numerous state and federal charges, including first-degree murder “in furtherance of an act of terrorism.” While he has pleaded not guilty to the state charges, he has yet to enter a plea for the federal charges.
Following a multi-day manhunt, Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. His case has drawn significant public attention, with a vocal contingent of supporters decrying the U.S. healthcare system. These supporters have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mangione’s legal defense, and billboards proclaiming his innocence have appeared in lower Manhattan.
Despite public outcry, investigators maintain that forensic evidence links Mangione to the crime. A firearm recovered at the time of his arrest has been matched to shell casings found at the scene of Thompson’s murder.
Mangione’s attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, criticized the decision to pursue the death penalty, arguing that it “goes against the recommendation of the local federal prosecutors, the law, and historical precedent.”
“This is a corrupt web of government dysfunction and one-upmanship,” she added. “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.”
