Federal prosecutors to ask for the death penalty for Luigi Mangione in the murder of the CEO of Unitedhealthcare

New York (AP) – US prosecutor Pam Bondi said on Tuesday that she had ordered prosecutors to ask for the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, Man accused of lowering Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedhealthcareNext on the President’s campaign promise To vigorously continue the capital punishment.

This is the first time that the Ministry of Justice has been looking at the death penalty since President Donald Trump has returned to office in January with a wish to take over the federal executions. Bondi’s decision to do so in the very publicized case against Mangione, who aroused a series of angry supporters against the health care industry, underlines the Attorney General’s commitment to make the president’s push for new cases of death penalty.

Trump supervised an unprecedented series of executions at the end of his first mandate and was a frank supporter of the expansion of capital punishment. Bondi’s order comes for weeks after raising a moratorium on the federal death penalty that it had been imposed under the administration of former president Joe Biden.

“The murder by Luigi Mangione by Brian Thompson – an innocent man and father of two young children – was a premeditated composure assassination that shocked America,” Bondi said in a statement that described the murder of Thompson as “an act of political violence”.

Mangione, a 26 -year -old graduate of the Ivy League, is accused of having shot down Thompson in December outside a Manhattan hotel where Unitedhealthcare was about to hold a conference on investors. Thompson, who was 50 years old and had two children in high school, worked for decades in Unitedhealthcare and his parent company.

Mangione faces accusations of federal murder and distinct state for murder, which has shaken the business community while galvanizing health insurance critics. Federal accusations include murder thanks to the use of a firearm, which carries the possibility of the death penalty. The state accusations bear a maximum life in prison for life. Mangione pleaded not guilty to an act of indictment of the state and did not argue the federal accusations.

Prosecutors said both cases proceed on parallel tracksThe case of the state should be tried first. It was not immediately clear if Bondi’s announcement will change the order.

A message asking for comments was left for a spokesperson for mangione lawyers.

The murder of Thompson Alarmed the business worldWhere some health insurers have been hastily gone to remote or online work meetings. The case too channeled the frustrations of certain Americans with health insurance companies. Mangione writings and the words on Balls recovered from the scene Refained animus to health insurers and US companies, authorities said.

The surveillance video showed a masked shooter pulling Thompson from behind. The police said that the words “delay”, “deny” and “deposit” were scribbled on the ammunition, imitate a phrase commonly used to describe insurers’ tactics To avoid paying complaints.

Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of New York, after a five -day man hunt.

Police said Mangione had him with him A 9 mm handgun This corresponded to that used in the shooting and other articles, including a false identity document and a notebook described by the authorities as a “manifesto” in which they say that he expressed hostility towards the health insurance industry and rich executives.

Among the notebooks of the notebook, the prosecutors declared one from August 2024 which said “the objective is insurance” because “it checks each box” and one of October which describes an intention of “Wack” a CEO of an insurance company.

Unitedhealthcare is the biggest health insurer in the United States, although the company said that Mangione was never a customer.

Mangione’s lawyer Karen Friedman-Agnifilo, said that she would seek to remove some of the evidence entered during her arrest. She also challenged parallel proceedings, accusing “jurisdictions at war” of transforming Mangione into a “human ping-pong ball”.

After his arrest, Mangione was taken by the plane and the helicopter to New York and slowly walked a MANHATTAN throw in a show very choreographed by a crowd of officers with assault rifles and a contingent which included the mayor of New York, Eric Adams.

Trump signed an executive decree on his first day of power on January 20 which forced the Ministry of Justice to request the death penalty in the federal cases if necessary. The Trump administration carried out 13 federal executions during its first mandate, more than under any president of modern history.

Biden campaigned on a commitment to work on the abolition of the federal capital punishment, but has taken no major measures for this purpose. While the Attorney General Merrick Garland interrupted the federal executions in 2021, the Biden Ministry of Justice Maintain the convictions of the death corridor prisoners in many cases.

During his last few weeks in power, Biden commissioned the sentences of 37 of the 40 people in the corridor of Federal Death, converting their sanctions into life in life. The three detainees who remain are Dylann Roof, who carried out the Racist Slaying 2015 of nine black members of the mother church Emanuel AME in Charleston, in South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally killed 11 faithful to Pittsburgh Synagogue Tree of Life in 2018The deadliest anti -Semitic attack in American history.