U.S. Attorney General Directs Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty for Luigi Mangione, Marking First Federal Death Sentence Sought By This Trump Administration

On April 1, 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced she has direct­ed act­ing U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, Matthew Podolsky, to seek the death penal­ty against Luigi Mangione for the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. This is the first time AG Bondi has direct­ed pros­e­cu­tors to seek the death penal­ty since President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2025, when he issued an exec­u­tive order includ­ing a call to ​“restore” the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In a state­ment fol­low­ing her announce­ment, AG Bondi said, ​“After care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, I have direct­ed fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to seek the death penal­ty in this case as we car­ry out President Trump’s agen­da…” She char­ac­ter­ized Mr. Mangione’s alleged actions as ​“a pre­med­i­tat­ed, cold­blood­ed assas­si­na­tion.” Mr. Mangione faces both New York state and fed­er­al charges, how­ev­er, New York abol­ished the death penal­ty in 2007, and state charges car­ry a max­i­mum of life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. He has pled not guilty to state charges.

The Department of Justice has estab­lished poli­cies to guide its deci­sion-mak­ing regard­ing use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. These poli­cies require the Department to weigh a num­ber of fac­tors and engage in a delib­er­ate and care­ful process to ensure fair­ness and com­pli­ance with the law. It’s unclear whether these poli­cies were fol­lowed in this case. Mr. Mangione’s coun­sel, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, called the deci­sion ​“polit­i­cal” and said that it ​“goes against the rec­om­men­da­tion of the local fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, the law, and historical precedent.”

AG Bondi’s announce­ment to seek the death penal­ty against Mr. Mangione comes just a month after she issued a memo lift­ing the mora­to­ri­um on fed­er­al exe­cu­tions pre­vi­ous­ly adopt­ed by AG Merrick Garland’s DOJ and encour­aged pros­e­cu­tors to seek the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In the memo, AG Bondi directs pros­e­cu­tors to seek the death penal­ty for mur­ders of law enforce­ment offi­cers and cap­i­tal crimes com­mit­ted by ille­gal immi­grants, ​“absent sig­nif­i­cant mitigating circumstances.”

The last death penal­ty tri­al in New York was the fed­er­al death pros­e­cu­tion of Sayfullo Saipov in 2023. Mr. Saipov was found guilty of mur­der­ing eight peo­ple in 2017 by delib­er­ate­ly ram­ming a truck onto a crowd­ed Manhattan bike path. Neither Mr. Saipov nor his attor­neys con­test­ed his involve­ment in the crime. However, because the jury did not unan­i­mous­ly agree that he deserved a death sen­tence, Mr. Saipov was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. 

In January 2024, under AG Garland, the DOJ announced it would seek the death penal­ty for Payton Gendron, who killed 10 Black peo­ple in a race-moti­vat­ed shoot­ing in a Buffalo, NY, super­mar­ket in May 2022. This was the only cap­i­tal case autho­rized by AG Garland dur­ing the Biden Administration. That announce­ment came twen­ty months after the mass shoot­ing and eleven months after Mr. Gendron pled guilty to state first degree mur­der charges and was sen­tenced to mul­ti­ple sen­tences of life with­out parole. Mr. Gendron is sched­uled to go to tri­al in September 2025 but has filed a motion request­ing a change of venue for his tri­al and delay in tri­al, as his coun­sel alleges pros­e­cu­tors have not turned over all necessary evidence.

During the last six months of President Trump’s first term in office, his admin­is­tra­tion car­ried out 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions, after a 17-year pause on federal executions.