Death Penalty Information Center
On April 1, 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced she has directed acting U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, Matthew Podolsky, to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione for the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. This is the first time AG Bondi has directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty since President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2025, when he issued an executive order including a call to ?“restore” the federal death penalty. In a statement following her announcement, AG 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…” She characterized Mr. Mangione’s alleged actions as ?“a premeditated, coldblooded assassination.” Mr. Mangione faces both New York state and federal charges, however, New York abolished the death penalty in 2007, and state charges carry a maximum of life in prison without the possibility of parole. He has pled not guilty to state charges.
The Department of Justice has established policies to guide its decision-making regarding use of the federal death penalty. These policies require the Department to weigh a number of factors and engage in a deliberate and careful process to ensure fairness and compliance with the law. It’s unclear whether these policies were followed in this case. Mr. Mangione’s counsel, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, called the decision ?“political” and said that it ?“goes against the recommendation of the local federal prosecutors, the law, and historical precedent.”
AG Bondi’s announcement to seek the death penalty against Mr. Mangione comes just a month after she issued a memo lifting the moratorium on federal executions previously adopted by AG Merrick Garland’s DOJ and encouraged prosecutors to seek the federal death penalty. In the memo, AG Bondi directs prosecutors to seek the death penalty for murders of law enforcement officers and capital crimes committed by illegal immigrants, ?“absent significant mitigating circumstances.”
The last death penalty trial in New York was the federal death prosecution of Sayfullo Saipov in 2023. Mr. Saipov was found guilty of murdering eight people in 2017 by deliberately ramming a truck onto a crowded Manhattan bike path. Neither Mr. Saipov nor his attorneys contested his involvement in the crime. However, because the jury did not unanimously agree that he deserved a death sentence, Mr. Saipov was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In January 2024, under AG Garland, the DOJ announced it would seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron, who killed 10 Black people in a race-motivated shooting in a Buffalo, NY, supermarket in May 2022. This was the only capital case authorized by AG Garland during the Biden Administration. That announcement came twenty months after the mass shooting and eleven months after Mr. Gendron pled guilty to state first degree murder charges and was sentenced to multiple sentences of life without parole. Mr. Gendron is scheduled to go to trial in September 2025 but has filed a motion requesting a change of venue for his trial and delay in trial, as his counsel alleges prosecutors have not turned over all necessary evidence.
During the last six months of President Trump’s first term in office, his administration carried out 13 federal executions, after a 17-year pause on federal executions.
