Luigi Mangione pleads not guilty to federal murder charge in CEO's death
· UPIApril 25 (UPI) -- Luigi Mangione on Friday pleaded not guilty to federal stalking and first-degree murder charges in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.
Prosecutors have said they will seek a death sentence should he be convicted.
Mangione, 26, of Maryland, appeared for his arraignment in federal court in Manhattan, N.Y. He was shackled at the ankles and wore a beige jail uniform over a long-sleeve gray T-shirt.
About 20 supporters protested his arrest outside the courthouse.
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The federal charges are first-degree murder with a firearm, a weapons offense and two counts of stalking.
Mangione has already pleaded not guilty to murder and terrorism charges in New York, and gun possession and other charges in Pennsylvania. His defense team has requested that capital punishment not be an option for Mangione, and said in a court filing that Attorney General Pam Bondi's public statements in regard to the death penalty that her "public statements have significantly prejudiced this case, the New York State case, and the federal grand jury presentation."
New York state outlawed the death penalty in 2004. The last execution in New York City was 70 years ago.
Prosecutors filed a notice Thursday seeking the death penalty for Mangione. The prosecutors noted the intentional nature of Thompson's killing. It will take an unanimous decision by jurors to approve the execution.
"Mangione presents a future danger because he expressed intent to target an entire industry, and rally political and social opposition to that industry, by engaging in an act of lethal violence," the prosecutors' notice read. "And he took steps to evade law enforcement, flee New York City immediately after the murder, and cross state lines while armed with a privately manufactured firearm and silencer."
Bondi expressed earlier in April that she would seek the death penalty for Mangione "as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again," and in line with a statement she made in February that she planned to lift the moratorium on federal executions.
Mangione responded with one-word answers before pleading not guilty.
District Judge Margaret Garnett set the next hearing for Dec. 5, which is a year and a day after the homicide.
Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Mangione on four charges.
Thompson, 50, was killed by a masked gunman on a Manhattan sidewalk while walking to the Hilton Hotel at West 54th Street and Sixth Avenue for an annual investors conference. Mangione wasn't a customer of UnitedHealthcare.
Mangione purportedly fled New York and was recognized in a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pa., five days later. Authorities allege bullet casings found at the scene of the murder match a gun found in Mangione's possession, and that his fingerprints were found on a protein bar wrapper and water bottle recovered from near where the shooting took place.
They also said he was in possession of a 262-page handwritten document complaining about the U.S. healthcare system.
Mangione, who is the grandson of a wealthy real estate developer, has lived in Maryland, Hawaii and Pennsylvania, and traveled to Asia in 2024.
He has no prior criminal record.