Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Judge Rules Luigi Mangione Will Not Face Death Penalty

(Chad Davis via Wikimedia Commons)

A federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Friday that Luigi Mangione will not face the death penalty.

Judge Margaret Garnett, a Biden appointee, dismissed two counts of the indictment, leaving the two others that carry a potential maximum punishment of “life in prison without parole.”

“The chief practical effect of the legal infirmities of Counts Three and Four, and this Court’s decision that they must be dismissed, is solely to foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury that will otherwise determine, at trial, whether to convict the Defendant for causing Brian Thompson’s death,” the judge wrote.

Mangione was indicted for allegedly stalking and murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024.

Attorney General Pam Bondi directed federal prosecutors in April to seek the death penalty to “carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”

“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 wrote in April.

Mangione’s attorneys wrote in an April filing that the government “intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt.”

“The Attorney General’s pattern of public statements show with remarkable clarity and consistency that she has ordered this capital prosecution unabashedly for political reasons, that her statements prejudice any potential grand jury pool, and that the victim’s professional status as a CEO was relevant to her decision,” they argued. “As will be shown below, her decision was also reached without any regard to the established Department of Justice death penalty protocol, which she has wholly abandoned.”