US prosecutors pursue death penalty for Luigi Mangione, suspect in 2024 killing of healthcare CEO

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

On Tuesday, US Attorney General Pam Bondi made a statement announcing that she had advised prosecutors to pursue the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting and killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. She was quoted saying: “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.”

Mangione, 26, was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania in on December 9 after he was implicated in Thompson’s death outside a hotel in Manhattan. On December 4, the CEO arrived there to attend a shareholder meeting, and he was shot by a masked gunman. After the incident, some health insurance employers opted for remote work and virtual shareholder meetings due to safety concerns.

Police arrested Mangione five days later in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles from New York. They report that he had a ghost gun and anti-health-insurance writings with him at the time.

Mangione awaits trial at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a New York facility located in Brooklyn. He continues to deny the state charges, for which the maximum penalty under state law is life in prison without the possibility of parole. The state of New York has charged him with first-degree murder, murder as terrorism, and nine other offenses.

Mangione has not yet entered a plea for the charges on the federal level. These charges include murder through use of a firearm and interstate stalking, which make Mangione legally elegible for the death penalty.

Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, responded to Bondi’s statement announcing intent to seek the death penalty, saying: “the Justice Department has moved from the dysfunctional to the barbaric.”