An attorney for Luigi Mangione accused the Justice Department of backing a “murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people.”
The comment came after Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the accused killer.
“While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said in a statement. “By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Bondi announced that she wanted the government to execute Mangione, who is accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“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,” Bondi said. “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.”
The former Ivy League student is facing two parallel criminal cases in Manhattan, one from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and one from federal prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York.
New York has eliminated the death penalty for cases brought by state prosecutors, such as the Manhattan District Attorney. Federal prosecutors in the Justice Department can still seek death as a punishment.
Friedman Agnifilo’s statement said the decision to “murder” Mangione was “political and goes against the recommendation of the local federal prosecutors, the law, and historical precedent.”
“This is a corrupt web of government dysfunction and one-upmanship,” she said. “Luigi is caught in a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors, except the trophy is a young man’s life.”
Law enforcement officials arrested Mangione in Pennsylvania in December, following a manhunt. They say he shot and killed Thompson on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk as he arrived at a conference.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. While Mangione is in federal custody — housed in the same jail as Sean “Diddy” Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried — the Manhattan District Attorney’s case has been moving more swiftly to trial. Last week, prosecutors and defense attorneys sparred over whether he should be permitted to have a laptop in jail as he prepares his defense.
A federal judge had already assigned a lawyer specializing in capital punishment, Avi Moskowitz, to Mangione’s defense team in February. A representative for Mangione’s legal team didn’t immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump has prioritized the death penalty in the federal criminal justice system. Bondi, in her first day in office, issued a memorandum lifting a Biden-era moratorium on executions.
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