Luigi Mangione avoids demise penalty after prosecutors won’t enchantment ruling | EUROtoday

Federal prosecutors mentioned Friday they won’t problem a decide’s determination stopping them from pursuing the demise penalty in opposition to Luigi Mangione within the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

In a letter, Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley knowledgeable Judge Margaret Garnett that the federal government won’t ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn her ruling, clearing the way in which for a federal trial set to start in September. Mangione’s separate state homicide trial is scheduled for June.

Last month, Garnett dismissed a federal cost of homicide by way of use of a firearm, the depend that had allowed prosecutors to hunt capital punishment, figuring out it was legally flawed.

She wrote that her determination was supposed to “foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury” because it determines whether or not to convict Mangione within the December 2024 killing in Manhattan.

The decide, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, additionally threw out a gun cost however left in place stalking prices that carry a most punishment of life in jail.

To search the demise penalty, prosecutors wanted to point out that Mangione killed Thompson whereas committing one other “crime of violence.” Stalking doesn’t match that definition, Garnett wrote in a 39-page opinion, citing case regulation and authorized precedents.

The ruling disrupted the Trump administration’s bid to see Mangione executed for what U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi referred to as a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.” It was the primary capital case introduced by the Justice Department in President Donald Trump’s second time period.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not responsible within the federal and state instances. The state prices additionally carry the potential for life in jail. At a latest court docket listening to, he spoke out in opposition to the prospect of back-to-back trials, telling a decide: “It’s the same trial twice. One plus one is two. Double jeopardy by any commonsense definition.”

Thompson, 50, was killed on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a midtown Manhattan lodge for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor convention. Surveillance video confirmed a masked gunman taking pictures him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” had been written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to explain how insurers keep away from paying claims.

Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate from a rich Maryland household, was arrested 5 days later after he was noticed consuming breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.

His legal professionals have argued that authorities prejudiced his case by turning his arrest right into a “Marvel movie” spectacle, together with by having armed officers parade him up Manhattan pier after he was flown to New York, and by publicly declaring their need to see him executed even earlier than he was formally indicted.

Jury choice in Mangione’s federal case is scheduled for Sept. 8, adopted by opening statements and testimony on Oct. 13. His state trial is scheduled to start June 8, however the decide in that case, Gregory Carro, mentioned it may have been pushed again till Sept. 8 if federal prosecutors appealed the demise penalty ruling.

In her ruling, Garnett acknowledged that the choice “may strike the average person — and indeed many lawyers and judges — as tortured and strange, and the result may seem contrary to our intuitions about the criminal law.”

But, she mentioned, it mirrored her “committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case. The law must be the Court’s only concern.”