Attorney General Pam Bondy announced Tuesday that he would seek the death penalty of Luigi Mangione, who was charged with murdering United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson in front of a hotel in midtown Manhattan last December.
Bondy said her decision came after “careful consideration,” and that after President Biden declared a suspension on the death penalty for most federal criminals in 2021, it was in line with President Trump's executive order instructing the Department to update its use of the death penalty claim.
“Luigi Mangion's murder of Brian Thompson – the innocent man and father of two young children was a planned, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” Bondy said in a statement.
Nicholas Bias, a spokesman for the U.S. Lawyer's Office in Manhattan, has indicted Mangion's federal lawsuit, but declined to comment Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed murder charges against Mangion, a resident of Towson, Maryland, on December 14th. The complaint accused him of planning the shooting “with extreme caution.” Investigators tracked Thompson's move after checking in to a hostel on the Upper West Side using false identification and said they had staked the hotel in the days before the murder.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office charged Mangion with first-degree murder later that month. He faces the potential for living in a prison where he is not paroleed to those charges.
Mangion, 26, was arrested at McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The hooded gunman, who satisfies his account, approached Thompson as he headed for an early morning investor meeting in Hilton Midtown, New York.
Benjamin Weiser Contributed with a report from New York.
