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

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

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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.

“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 Donald Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” Trump’s AG said in a statement.

Attorneys for Mangione did not immediately comment on Bondi’s announcement.

Mangione has been charged in a federal complaint with murder through the use of a firearm, a death penalty-eligible crime, and other crimes for the Dec. 4 incident outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown. 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.

Trump has been a longtime supporter of capital punishment, even advocating for drug traffickers to be put to death in his first term.

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

Trump’s order came after President Joe 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 moratorium on death penalty cases while research was conducted on how executions were 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 Manhattan US attorney’s office in March 2023 failed to secure the death penalty against Sayfullo Saipov for killing eight people on a West Side bike path in 2023.

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