Luigi Mangione pleads now not to blame in federal court docket to homicide of UnitedHealthcare CEO

Luigi Mangione pleaded now not to blame Friday in New York federal court docket to the homicide of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Mangione faces a conceivable dying sentence within the case if he’s convicted within the federal case of murdering Thompson, who was once gunned down on a Manhattan boulevard in December.

The 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate is one at a time charged in New York state court docket with the slaying.

Mangione is accused of fatally capturing Thompson on Dec. 4 because the CEO was once strolling into the Hilton Hotel in midtown. UnitedHealth Group, the father or mother of Thompson’s medical health insurance massive, was once web hosting an match for traders on the resort that day.

Mangione was once arrested 5 days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

He is charged U.S. District Court in Manhattan with homicide thru use of a firearm, two counts of stalking, and a firearms offence.

Mangione seemed there Friday earlier than Judge Margaret Garnett to go into his plea.

The listening to took place an afternoon after the Justice Department officially notified Garnett that it will search the dying penalty within the case, arguing that Thompson’s killing was once ideologically motivated through Mangione’s anger towards the medical health insurance trade.

In a court docket submitting Thursday, prosecutors informed Garnett there have been a number of elements to warrant implementing a dying sentence within the case, together with the allegation that Mangione “intentionally killed” Thompson, and “that the killing required “considerable making plans and premeditation.”

“Mangione elected to homicide Thompson below those instances to magnify an ideological
message, maximize the visibility and have an effect on of the sufferer’s homicide, and to impress broad-based resistance to the sufferer’s trade,” the filing said.

“Mangione gifts a long run risk as a result of he expressed intent to focus on a whole trade, and rally political and social opposition to that trade, through enticing in an act of deadly violence; and he took steps to evade legislation enforcement, flee New York City straight away after the homicide, and move state strains whilst armed with a privately manufactured firearm and silencer.”

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 1 first revealed that the Justice Department wanted to have Mangione executed if he is convicted.

“Luigi Mangione’s homicide of Brian Thompson — an blameless guy and father of 2 babies — was once a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that stunned America,” Bondi said in a statement that day.

Mangione’s lawyers in an April 11 court filing asked Judge Garnett to block prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, arguing that Bondi had violated the defendant’s rights to due process and that the attorney general had prejudiced the pool of potential jurors with her public statement.

On Friday, Garnett warned lawyers in the case to refrain from “public statement that might hinder Mangione’s proper to an even trial.

“I’m specifically directing the government to convey my directive to Mr. Clayton and request that he convey the same to Attorney General Bondi and her associates at main Justice,” Garnett mentioned. Jay Clayton is the period in-between Manhattan U.S. Attorney, and “main Justice” is a connection with the Justice Department and its headquarters in Washington, D.C.

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