US seeks death penalty for UnitedHealthcare CEO killer

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she has directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi M., who is accused of gunning down an American health care CEO.

He faces separate federal and state murder charges after authorities say he shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a New York hotel in December 2024.

Luigi M.’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 released on Tuesday.

“After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case.”

Bondi called the murder “an act of political violence” that “may have posed grave risk of death to additional persons.”

Some health insurance critics have rallied around Mangione as a symbol of frustrations over steep US healthcare costs and the power of health insurers to refuse payments for some treatments.

Defense says call for death penalty ‘barbaric’

M.’s lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo called the decision to seek the death penalty “barbaric.”

“While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” Friedman Agnifilo said in a statement. 

M. has pleaded not guilty to the New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses. 

New York doesn’t have the death penalty for state charges and M. could face life in prison without parole if convicted in that case. 

He has not yet been required to enter a plea on the federal charges.

US revives death penalty at federal level

If M. is convicted in the federal case, the jury would determine in a separate phase of the trial whether to recommend the death penalty. 

Any such recommendation must be unanimous, and the judge would be required to impose it.

It is the first time the Justice Department has sought to bring the death penalty since President Donald Trump returned to office in January. 

Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office in January that compels the department to seek the death penalty in federal cases where applicable.

These had been halted under the Biden administration. 

Trump oversaw an unprecedented run of 13 executions at the end of his first term and has been an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment. 

*Editor’s note: DW adheres to the German press code, which stresses the importance of protecting the privacy of suspected criminals or victims and obliges us to refrain from revealing full names in such cases.