NEW YORK (AP) — Luigi Mangione’s lawyers urged a judge on Saturday to bar federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing that authorities prejudiced his case by turning his arrest into a “Marvel movie” spectacle and by publicly declaring their desire to see him executed.
Fresh from a legal victory that eliminated terrorism charges in Mangione’s state murder case, his lawyers are now fighting to have his federal case dismissed, seizing on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s declaration prior to his April indictment that capital punishment is warranted for a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”
Bondi’s statements and other official actions — including a highly choreographed perp walk that saw Mangione led up a Manhattan pier by armed officers, and the Trump administration’s flouting of established death penalty procedures — “have violated Mr. Mangione’s constitutional and statutory rights and have fatally prejudiced this death penalty case,” his lawyers argued in a court filing.
Mangione’s defense team, led by former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo, implored U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, an appointee of President Joe Biden, ”to correct the errors made by the government and prevent this case from proceeding as a death penalty prosecution.”
