Luigi Mangione escapes federal death penalty in CEO slaying

Judge rules Luigi Mangione won’t face death penalty

Fox News’ Nate Foy reports as a judge agreed to throw out the most serious charge against Luigi Mangione and denied the defense’s request to suppress some evidence. Legal editor Kerri Urbahn discusses the judge’s decisions.

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Luigi Mangione has escaped the death penalty.

The accused killer’s life will be spared after federal prosecutors on Friday said they will not appeal a judge’s ruling to quash capital punishment against him.

In a letter, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District said it accepts U.S. District Judge Margarett Garnett‘s Jan. 30 decision to toss the death-penalty-eligible murder charge against Mangione, who is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024.

Luigi Mangione escapes federal death penalty in CEO slaying

Luigi Mangione will not face the death penalty after federal prosecutors on Friday said they won’t appeal a judge’s ruling when she tossed the capital punishment charge against the accused killer. (Curtis Means for DailyMail/Pool)

Despite not being tried on murder charges, Mangione still faces two federal stalking charges.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin on September 8th. Opening statements will begin in October.

Mangione, 27, also faces life in prison at a separate murder trial in state court slated to begin in June. He has pleaded not guilty to Thompson’s killing.

In order to charge Mangione with the federal charge of murder through use of a firearm, prosecutors need an underlying crime of violence, Garnett said in her January ruling.

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Photo of Brian Thompson was was the Chief Executive Officer of UnitedHealthcare Unit until he was shot in New York City in December 2024

This 2017 file photo of Brian Thompson was released via Businesswire when he was named Chief Executive Officer of UnitedHealthcare Unit in 2017. (Businesswire)

Garnett wrote that she was bound by Supreme Court precedent.

“Over the course of the last two decades or so, the Supreme Court has embarked upon a legal journey, explained herein, that now requires lower courts to engage in an analysis totally divorced from the conduct at issue and centered on the hypothetically least serious conduct that the charged crime could possibly cover,” she wrote.

Surveillance cameras recorded the slaying. Video footage showed Thompson walking down a Manhattan sidewalk outside a hotel when a gunman approached him from behind and opened fire.