Luigi Mangione, 26, appeared in federal court on Friday for the first time after his indictment on federal charges of killing the former CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson.
Federal prosecutors formally filed notice with the court Thursday that they plan to seek the death penalty. Mangione pleaded not guilty on Friday.
What's unusual in his case is that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced earlier this month she was already directing federal prosecutors to seek Mangione's execution.
It's the first death penalty case the Department of Justice is tying to President Trump's Day One executive order restoring the executions of people on federal death row, and committing to pursue the death penalty for all severe crimes that demand its use.
The Trump administration's pursuit of the death penalty for Mangione marks a new development in the shifting politics of capital punishment in the United States, which has seesawed for more than half a century.
"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. After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again," Bondi said in an statement.
Mangione's attorneys asked a federal court to prevent federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty. In court records filed April 11, the lawyers argued Bondi's directive prior to his indictment and her public statements were political and broke established Justice Department protocol on the death penalty.
"Because the Attorney General has chosen to proceed in this way, Mr. Mangione's Due Process rights have already been violated and the manner in which the Government has acted has prejudiced the grand jury pool and has corrupted the grand jury process," the attorneys wrote in the filing.
They're asking the court to bar Bondi from making future public statements that could infringe upon Mangione's right to a fair trial.
Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, agreed that Bondi's announcement — weeks before Mangione's indictment on April 17 — was rare.
The reference to carrying out Trump's agenda, "in combination with the unusual timing in this case, suggests that the death penalty is being used here to achieve some sort of political purpose," Maher said in an interview.
The nonprofit organization doesn't take a position on the death penalty, but is critical of how the punishment is applied in certain cases.
Federal prosecutors in New York haven't responded to a request for comment on the perception of politics in the Mangione case.
In court filings in response to Mangione's lawyers' claims of potential grand jury bias, prosecutors said the federal court has limited authority to intervene with grand jury proceedings. Prosecutors for their part also argued that it was premature, before his indictment, for Mangione to challenge the death penalty in his case.
Whipsaw of death penalty politics
Maher said over the last half-century, the political leanings of the Supreme Court, Congress and the presidency contributed to dramatically different approaches to the federal death penalty.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 in a landmark case declared the death penalty unconstitutional. The Court decided states and the federal government were imposing capital punishment in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner that was racially and otherwise discriminatory. The justices ruled that the lack of standards in implementation amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Then the pendulum swung again, and the federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1988 expanded the federal death penalty for drug-related murders as part of a larger crackdown in President Ronald Reagan's war on drugs.
Building on that, Congress enacted the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, or Title VI of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. It expanded the number of federal offenses eligible for the death penalty.
In 2001, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, became the first federal death row inmate executed in almost 40 years.
That act is still the law of the land. But different presidents have chosen to give it varying weight.
Maher said over the next two decades, "the federal death penalty was being heavily criticized and scrutinized because of a lot of concerns about the racially biased way that it was used."
Polling from Gallup, which has been tracking the issue since the 1940s, shows that 53% of Americans favor the death penalty for those convicted of murder as of October 2024. That ties for the lowest percentage of public support since the landmark 1972 Supreme Court decision.
The first Trump administration executed 13 death row inmates in 2020 and 2021 — compared to the executions of three people on federal death row during the first term of President George W. Bush. There were no federal executions during Bush's second term or during the Obama administration.
President Joe Biden imposed a moratorium on federal death row executions. In the weeks leading up to Trump's second term, Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 people on federal death row.
The three remaining federal death row prisoners whose sentences Biden didn't commute are all challenging their cases.
Push for more state executions
Trump's executive order may also affect the executions of state death row inmates.
Trump directed the Justice Department to encourage state attorneys general and local prosecutors to bring state capital charges for all capital crimes. The administration also pledged to help states where the death penalty is legal, like South Carolina, secure a sufficient supply of drugs to carry out lethal injections.
David Pascoe, solicitor of the First Judicial Circuit in the state's Lowcountry, welcomes the support from the federal government.
"In South Carolina, we went over a decade without even having any executions because we just didn't have the drug to administer for the execution," he said in an interview.
South Carolina and other states had in the past had difficulty obtaining some drugs for lethal injections, including sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide, due to shortages.
Some death penalty opponents also criticized pentobarbital as a single-dose lethal injection for being inhumane and causing unnecessary pain and suffering.
Pascoe pushed for a state law that gives death row prisoners the option of execution by firing squad to address concerns of botched lethal injections and in case of drug shortages. The state legislature passed the law in 2021. The state also allows execution by electrocution.
South Carolina has executed three people in 2025. Pascoe prosecuted the most recent case, that of Mikal Mahdi. Mahdi was executed by firing squad for killing police Capt. James Myers during a week-long crime spree in 2004. He was also sentenced to life in prison in North Carolina for the killing of convenience store clerk Christopher Boggs.
Pascoe says it's difficult to say whether the Trump administration encouraging more state death penalty prosecutions will mean prosecutors in his state will actually pursue more such convictions.
"But it's going to be very appreciated in facilitating us to reach justice in our cases, I know that," Pascoe said.
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