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FILE – Luigi Mangione is escorted into Manhattan state court in New York, Sept. 16, 2025.<\/p>\n
Seth Wenig\/AP<\/p>\n
FILE – Luigi Mangione, accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, appears in Manhattan state court in New York, Sept. 16, 2025. (Curtis Means\/Pool Photo via AP, file)<\/p>\n
Curtis Means\/AP<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Prosecutors said Friday that Luigi Mangione\u2019s death penalty case in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson should carry on unimpeded, urging a judge to reject a defense push to dismiss charges and rule out capital punishment over Attorney General Pam Bondi\u2019s public statements suggesting Mangione deserves execution.<\/p>\n
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The U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Manhattan also asked U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett to deny the defense\u2019s bid to suppress certain evidence collected during the arrest last year, including a 9 mm handgun, a notebook in which authorities say Mangione described his intent to \u201cwack\u201d an insurance executive and statements he made to police.<\/p>\n
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\u201cPretrial publicity, even when intense, is not itself a constitutional defect,” prosecutors wrote in a 121-page court filing, citing prior rulings from the Supreme Court and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n
As for the evidence, which Mangione\u2019s lawyers contend was collected without a warrant and without him being read his rights, prosecutors said police officers were justified in searching the suspect\u2019s backpack to make sure there were no dangerous items. His statements to officers, they said, were made voluntarily and before he was taken into police custody.<\/p>\n
Rather than dismissing the case outright or barring the government from seeking the death penalty, prosecutors argued, the defense\u2019s concerns can best be alleviated by carefully questioning prospective jurors about their knowledge of the case and ensuring Mangione\u2019s rights are respected at trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the defendant recasts as a constitutional crisis is merely a repackaging of arguments\u201d rejected in previous cases, prosecutors said. \u201cNone warrants dismissal of the indictment or categorical preclusion of a congressionally authorized punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges.<\/p>\n
In September a judge threw out state terrorism charges against him but kept the rest of that case \u2014 including an intentional murder charge \u2014 in place. He is due back in court in the state case Dec. 1 as his lawyers seek to bar prosecutors from using much of the same evidence seized upon his arrest.<\/p>\n
Mangione’s next court date in the federal case is Jan. 9.<\/p>\n
Thompson, 50, was killed Dec. 4, 2024, as he arrived at a Manhattan hotel for his company\u2019s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say \u201cdelay,\u201d \u201cdeny\u201d and \u201cdepose\u201d were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.<\/p>\n
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Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later while eating breakfast at a McDonald\u2019s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Bondi announced in April that she was directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty, declaring even before Mangione was formally indicted that capital punishment is warranted for a \u201cpremeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defense argued in a September court filing that Bondi\u2019s announcement \u2014 which she followed with Instagram posts and a TV appearance \u2014 showed the decision was \u201cbased on politics, not merit.\u201d They also said her remarks tainted the grand jury process that resulted in his indictment a few weeks later.<\/p>\n
Bondi\u2019s statements and other official actions \u2014 including a highly choreographed perp walk that saw Mangione led up a Manhattan pier by armed officers, and the Trump administration\u2019s flouting of established death penalty procedures \u2014 \u201chave violated Mr. Mangione\u2019s constitutional and statutory rights and have fatally prejudiced this death penalty case,\u201d his lawyers said.<\/p>\n
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Trump, who oversaw an unprecedented run of 13 executions at the end of his first term, has also offered opinions about Mangione despite court rules against any pretrial publicity that could interfere with the right to a fair trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shot someone in the back, as clear as you\u2019re looking at me or I\u2019m looking at you. He shot \u2014 he looked like a pure assassin,\u201d Trump told Fox News in September.<\/p>\n
In their Friday filing, federal prosecutors countered that Bondi\u2019s remarks were irrelevant to the process because there’s no evidence that grand jurors who voted to indict Mangione were influenced.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis argument, like others, rests on conjecture rather than evidence,\u201d the prosecution team said.<\/p>\n
Nor has the defense cited any precedent \u201csuggesting that public commentary renders a grand jury incapable of fulfilling its constitutional role,” they added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE – Luigi Mangione is escorted into Manhattan state court in New York, Sept. 16, 2025. Seth Wenig\/AP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[6972,153,6974,27294,75,84,83,27295,9,24,63,833,834,2038,3065,2336,829,831],"class_list":{"0":"post-48371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-brian-thompson","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-luigi-mangione","11":"tag-mangione-bondi-unitedhealthcare-killing-death-penalty","12":"tag-manhattan","13":"tag-manhattan-headlines","14":"tag-manhattan-news","15":"tag-margaret-garnett","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","20":"tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","21":"tag-pam-bondi","22":"tag-product-30083-ap-new-york-city-news-no-weather","23":"tag-product-30085-ap-new-york-state-news-no-weather","24":"tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","25":"tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}