Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that she had directed federal prosecutors to pursue death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.
Thompson was shot outside a New York hotel on December 4. Weeks later, authorities arrested Mangione, 26, in Pennsylvania after an intensive nationwide manhunt.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state charges and has yet to enter a plea for separate federal charges. He remains in custody at a New York prison while awaiting trial.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced she is seeking the death penalty for Luigi Mangione. pic.twitter.com/ZTl3IEtOx3
— Trending Politics (@tpbreaking) April 1, 2025
In her statement, Bondi described Thompson’s murder as an act of “political violence” that posed a “grave risk of death to additional persons” nearby.
Investigators believe Mangione targeted Thompson, 50, out of frustration with the U.S. healthcare insurance industry.
Mangione faces 11 state criminal charges in New York, including first-degree murder and murder as a crime of terrorism. A conviction on all counts would result in a mandatory life sentence without parole.
However, federal prosecutors have also charged Mangione with using a firearm to commit murder and interstate stalking resulting in death—charges that qualify him for the death penalty. The state and federal cases will proceed simultaneously.
Thompson, who became CEO of UnitedHealthcare—the largest private health insurer in the U.S.—in April 2021, was gunned down while entering a hotel where his company was hosting an investors’ meeting. The masked assailant shot him in the back before fleeing the scene.
New York prosecutors have presented key evidence, including a fingerprint match tying Mangione to the crime scene. According to District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Mangione arrived in New York on November 24, using a fake ID to stay at a Manhattan hostel for ten days before carrying out the attack.
Authorities tracked Mangione down five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. When arrested, he was found with a ghost gun—an untraceable firearm assembled from parts—a fake ID, a passport, and a handwritten document detailing his “motivation and mindset.”
Thompson’s killing has sparked widespread debate about the American healthcare system. Many Americans, who pay some of the highest healthcare costs in the world, have voiced frustration over the policies of major insurance companies.
In December, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned that the online rhetoric following Thompson’s murder was “extraordinarily alarming.”
As the case moves forward, legal experts say it could become a landmark trial on political violence, corporate influence, and domestic extremism in the U.S.