Judge Bars Prosecutors From Seeking Death Penalty Against Luigi Mangione

A judge has ruled that federal prosecutors can’t seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors can’t seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a judge ruled Friday, foiling the Trump administration’s bid to see him executed for what it called a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding that it was technically flawed. She wrote that she did so to “foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury” as it weighs whether to convict Mangione.

Garnett also dismissed a firearm charge but left in place stalking charges that carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. In order to seek the death penalty, prosecutors needed to show that Mangione killed Thompson while committing another “crime of violence.” Stalking does not fit that definition, Garnett wrote in her opinion, citing case law and legal precedents.

The government could try to appeal. A message seeking comment was left for a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is prosecuting the federal case.

Garnett acknowledged that the decision “may strike the average person — and indeed many lawyers and judges — as tortured and strange, and the result may seem contrary to our intuitions about the criminal law.” But, she said, it reflected her “committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case. The law must the Court’s only concern.”