Luigi Mangione will not face the death penalty after a US judge dismissed murder and weapons charges against the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in a major blow to federal prosecutors.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett in Manhattan said she felt limited by Supreme Court precedents in dismissing the murder charge. She said it was legally incompatible with the two stalking charges Mangione still faces, while acknowledging that ordinary people might be stunned by the outcome.
Mangione, 27, still faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of stalking.
Dominic Gentile, a federal prosecutor, told Garnett during a routine court hearing Friday that the government has not yet decided whether to appeal.
Thompson, who led UnitedHealth Group’s health insurance business, was shot dead on December 4, 2024 outside the Hilton hotel in downtown Manhattan.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges stemming from Thompson’s death and has been in jail since his arrest in Pennsylvania five days after the killing.
While government officials widely condemned Thompson’s killing, Mangione became something of a folk hero for some who decry the high costs of medical care and health insurers.
Garnett has scheduled jury selection in the case to begin in September, with the evidentiary phase of the trial set to begin Oct. 12.
Mangione has also pleaded not guilty to separate charges of murder, weapons and forgery in a New York court in Manhattan.
No trial date has been set in that case.
Prosecutors in that case suffered their own setback in September, when the judge dismissed two terrorism-related charges against Mangione.
In a 39-page decision, Garnett said federal prosecutors could only pursue murder and weapons charges if the stalking charges qualified as “crimes of violence.”
She said the charges are ineligible because any use of force can be accomplished through reckless, as opposed to intentional, conduct.
The judge said prosecutors and Mangione agreed that this was not the kind of “violence” the Supreme Court needed to find a violent crime.
Garnett acknowledged the “apparent absurdity” of the legal landscape and said no one would seriously doubt that Mangione’s alleged conduct — crossing state lines to kill a specific health care executive with a gun fitted with a silencer — was violent criminal conduct.
She said her analysis may seem “tortured and strange” to ordinary people, and many lawyers and judges, but that it “represents the court’s diligent effort to faithfully apply the Supreme Court’s dictates to the indictment in this case.” The law should be the sole concern of the court.”
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