Lawyer for Luigi Mangione on Friday asked a federal judge in New York to block prosecutors from seeking to impose the death penalty if he is convicted of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Mangione’s attorneys said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi violated his rights to due process by abandoning normal procedures for seeking the death penalty, and that Bondi prejudiced the pool of grand jurors who will be asked by prosecutors to indict Mangione.
“The stakes could not be higher. The United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione
as a political stunt,” Mangione’s attorneys wrote in a new filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Bondi on April 1 said she had ordered federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the murder case against the 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate.
“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 issued by the Department of Justice at the time.
In their filing Friday, Mangione’s lawyers cited Bondi’s statement, in which she also had said the death penalty would “carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”
“When the United States plans to kill one of its citizens, it must follow statutory and internal
procedures. Defendant Luigi Mangione seeks Court intervention now not merely because the Government has failed to follow these procedures but because it has abandoned them,” defense lawyers wrote.
“Mr. Mangione’s counsel asked for three months to prepare a fulsome mitigation submission to the Department of Justice’s Capital Committee and was ignored,” the filing said.
“We appreciate, and will address, the province and discretion of the Executive Branch of government, and how, in the usual course, courts defer to the Executive’s established procedures,” the lawyers wrote.
“But the Attorney General’s actions and public statements in this case have not followed the usual course,” the filing says.
“Because the Attorney General has chosen to proceed in this way, Mr. Mangione’s Due Process rights have already been violated and the manner in which the Government has acted has prejudiced the grand jury pool and has corrupted the grand jury process.”
Mangione is accused of fatally shooting Thompson on Dec. 4 as the CEO was walking into a Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan, where UnitedHealth Group, the parent of his company, was hosting an event for investors.
Mangione was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
He is being prosecuted in New York in two different courts: Manhattan Supreme Court, which is a state trial court, and in federal court.
Mangione is charged in Manhattan federal court with a complaint accusing him of murder, stalking and firearms offenses.
He has not yet been indicted by a federal grand jury, which would be necessary for prosecutors to bring him to trial.
Mantgione has not entered a plea in the federal case, but has pleaded not guilty in the state court case, where he is charged with murder and other crimes.
He faces a maximum possible sentence of life without parole in the state case if convicted. New York state does not have the death penalty.