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USA - New Analysis: Why Luigi Mangione can't be sentenced to death
February 5, 2026: February 5, 2026 - USA. New Analysis: Why the Death Penalty is Off the Table for Luigi Mangione
On January 30, a federal judge ruled that Luigi Mangione cannot face the death penalty in his upcoming trial for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. She dismissed two counts from his federal indictment, one of which carried the death penalty as a potential sentence. Described by The New York Times as “a significant blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to revive the use of the death penalty in federal cases,” this decision invalidates a capital prosecution that data and legal analysis show was a historical anomaly.
The American death penalty is overwhelmingly a state prerogative. Since 1972, 98.8% of people sentenced to death were sentenced in state courts, compared to just 0.9% by federal courts and 0.3% by the U.S. military. Most murders do not qualify for prosecution in federal court. Only certain circumstances, authorized by statute, allow the federal government to assume jurisdiction and seek a death sentence, such as crimes that occur on federal land, are committed by federal prisoners, or which target elected officials. Some offenses, like drug trafficking, bank robbery, and acts of terrorism, are also eligible for a federal death sentence when those activities result in death.
New York abolished the death penalty in 2007, so Mr. Mangione could only face a possible death sentence if the federal government asserted its jurisdiction and proved he had committed a death-eligible offense. But the murder of Brian Thompson plainly did not meet the most common criteria for the federal death penalty. It occurred on New York state land, with no alleged connection to drug or other organized criminal activity, against a person who was not a public official or employee.
Yet Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on April 1, 2025 that she was directing the Department of Justice to seek a federal death sentence for Mr. Mangione. The Department of Justice then filed capital charges against Mr. Mangione under the federal firearms statute. Mr. Mangione was accused of causing death through the use of a firearm under 18 U.S.C. § 924(j)(1), while committing an underlying federal “crime of violence” under § 924(c)(1)(A). Like a nesting doll, this would allow the DOJ to seek a death sentence for the murder of Mr. Thompson, so long as it could establish that Mr. Mangione committed a separate qualifying federal crime “during and in relation to” the murder.
The DOJ argued that the federal “crime of violence”— the “predicate” offense that would allow it to seek a death sentence — was stalking. Mr. Mangione was charged with interstate travel and use of electronic communications services for the purposes of stalking Mr. Thompson under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2261A. These are federal offenses because they require the perpetrator to physically or digitally cross state lines.
New research by the Death Penalty Information Center confirms the unprecedented nature of these charges. Of the 40 prisoners on federal death row at the time of Mr. Thompson’s killing in December 2024 — before President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 prisoners later that month — none were sentenced to death solely under a firearms charge.1 About 1/2 had no firearms charges whatsoever, and the other half committed at least 1 other independent offense that qualified for a federal death sentence such as bank robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, drug trafficking, or racketeering resulting in death. Unlike stalking, all these crimes were explicitly death-eligible under federal law.
The federal death penalty already has a well-documented history of arbitrariness, racial bias, and other constitutional concerns. In its 2024 report Fool’s Gold, DPI highlighted how the federal death penalty has been “a tool historically used by the government to intimidate and subjugate people of color, particularly Black and Native American communities.” The “most active death-sentencing federal jurisdictions were once the nation’s leaders of extra-judicial lynchings.”
U.S. District Court Judge Margaret M. Garnett of the Southern District of New York was faced with determining whether stalking qualified as a “crime of violence” for federal jurisdiction purposes. Using the “categorical approach” established by the Supreme Court, she found that it did not. To determine whether a predicate crime is sufficiently “violen[t],” this approach looks not to the specific facts of a case like Mr. Mangione’s, but to the elements of the predicate crime “in general for all possible cases,” asking whether those elements inherently meet the requirements of violent force. She offered several hypothetical scenarios where a person could be convicted of stalking resulting in death without themselves committing any violent acts or having the requisite intent to harm the victim. Accordingly, she ruled that stalking was not a “crime of violence” sufficient to justify the firearms charges — and thus the death penalty eligibility — in the case.
Judge Garnett dismissed the defense’s other challenges to the use of the death penalty as moot, including the argument that AG Bondi’s decision to seek death for Mr. Mangione was “explicitly and unapologetically political.” The case was already marked by procedural irregularities, including state and federal officials together conducting a staged “perp walk” of Mr. Mangione in front of press, in violation of federal court precedent; AG Bondi’s refusal to allow the defense to investigate and submit mitigation evidence before authorizing prosecutors to seek a death sentence; and AG Bondi’s unusual public announcement that federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty before Mr. Mangione was even indicted, which the defense contended violated laws protecting grand jury secrecy. In her public order, AG Bondi openly stated that seeking death for Mr. Mangione would “carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.” This was the 1st case for which the new administration sought the death penalty, following President Trump’s day-1 Executive Order directing the expansion of capital punishment nationally.
Judge Garnett gave federal prosecutors until February 27 to appeal her decision. The stalking charges that remain carry a maximum sentence of life without parole. Judge Garnett also denied a defense motion to exclude evidence recovered from a backpack seized during Mr. Mangione’s arrest. His federal trial is currently set to begin on September 8.
Reasons for Federal Death Penalty Jurisdiction
The most common reason for federal jurisdiction among the 40 federal death cases DPI analyzed was 18 U.S.C. § 1118: murder by a federal prisoner. 10 of the prisoners (25%) were sentenced to death for murders they committed while already incarcerated. 4 additional people were sentenced to death for murders committed on federal property under § 1111 (for which the § 1118 cases also qualified). Other reasons for federal death penalty jurisdiction not already listed included killing a witness to prevent them from testifying, killing a federal employee (a postal worker), and taking hostages resulting in their death. The 3 men who remain on federal death row today all committed firearms offenses, but were also sentenced to death for independent death-eligible crimes: for Robert Bowers and Dylann Roof, the obstruction of religious exercise resulting in death, and for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, use of a weapon of mass destruction, bombing a public place, and destruction of public property resulting in death.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/new-analysis-why-the-death-penalty-is-off-the-table-for-luigi-mangione (Source: Death Penalty Information Center, 05/02/2026)
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