Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, will not face the death penalty in his federal trial, after a judge on Friday dismissed the charges that could have led to that sentence.
Judge Margaret Garnett agreed to drop counts three and four, interstate harassment and homicide with a firearm, which were the charges that made the federal case potentially capital punishable.
Mangione is also being prosecuted in New York state court, a state where there is no death penalty.
Garnett explained in a court filing that her decision to do away with the death penalty stemmed from the need for the charges to meet the federal legal definition of a “violent crime” as a matter of law, something she considers met only in counts one and two: interstate stalking and use of electronic communications to stalk resulting in death.
If convicted, Mangione faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Garnett gave the prosecution until February 28 to appeal.
Mangione is accused of having killed the CEO of health insurer UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, in December 2024.
When he was arrested days later in Pennsylvania, he was carrying a kind of manifesto against health insurers. Mangione has become an idol of left-wing radicals, who turned out to support him during a hearing in U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan on Friday.
This week, a resident of Mankato, Minnesota, was indicted after showing up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in the New York district of Brooklyn, where Mangione is being held, and telling prison officials that he was an FBI agent with documents signed by a judge authorizing his release. The guards discovered the scam and arrested the man.
