Feds won’t appeal dismissal of Luigi Mangione’s death penalty charge

MANHATTAN (CN) — Federal prosecutors declined to revive their push for the death penalty in Luigi Mangione’s murder case Friday, roughly a month after a judge tossed the capital punishment charge for the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO slayer.

On Jan. 30, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed two charges against Mangione: murder through use of a firearm, which was death penalty-eligible, and a related gun charge. She gave prosecutors until Friday to determine whether they’d appeal her ruling, and the government announced in a single-page letter that it “will not seek interlocutory review."

In her order, the Joe Biden appointee sided with Mangione’s claims that these charges were unlawfully predicated on his remaining stalking counts, which were not inherently “crimes of violence” and thus cannot serve as the basis for capital punishment charges.

Garnett did so seemingly begrudgingly, writing in a 39-page ruling that preceding cases have deemed crimes like kidnapping and arson not “crime[s] of violence,” either. She wrote that, while her conclusion “may strike the average person — and indeed many lawyers and judges — as tortured and strange,” it’s the correct one in her mind, according to the Supreme Court.

“Regardless of its own views, a district court is duty-bound to follow binding Supreme Court precedent,” she wrote. “The law must be the court’s only concern.”

The ruling was a stunning blow to the government’s case against the 27-year-old murder suspect, who is being hailed in some online circles as a folk hero. Accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan in 2024, Mangione has spent nearly 15 months behind bars awaiting dueling murder trials in both state and federal court in New York.

If the government had decided to appeal for capital punishment, it could have delayed the start of both of Mangione’s trials.

His federal case, slated to head to trial in September, would have likely screeched to a halt to give the Second Circuit time to mull the death penalty. Meanwhile, the judge in his state case said he would have pushed the ambitious June trial date to the fall while the federal case was on appeal.

Now, while the death penalty is officially off the table for Mangione, he faces another fate he was trying to avoid: an impending state murder trial set to kick off months sooner than his defense team had hoped.

“We will not be ready on June 8,” Mangione’s attorney Karen Agnifilo said at a state scheduling hearing earlier this month.

“Well, be ready,” New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro shot back.

Mangione’s defense team holds that the dueling prosecutions for the same crime are the result of an unlawful “tug-of-war between two prosecution offices.”

“One plus one equals two,” Mangione said loudly at that scheduling conference — the first statement he’s made publicly in several months. “This is double jeopardy by any commonsense judgment.”

Mangione’s team didn’t immediately comment following Friday’s news.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the Justice Department would be pursuing the death penalty for Mangione last April.

“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 on April 1, 2025. Mangione was federally indicted 16 days later.

Some of Mangione’s supporters have panned Bondi’s announcement as a heavy-handed move to cater to the health insurance industry. Mangione’s defense team even accused Bondi of treating him unfairly because of her prior work at a lobbying firm that did work for UnitedHealthcare.

“Any criminal defendant, let alone one whom the government is trying to kill, is due a criminal process that is untainted by the financial interests of his prosecutors,” Mangione claimed in a January filing.

Bondi has denied any wrongdoing and bucked the defense’s call to recuse herself from the case.

Mangione still faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

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