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Lawyers for the man accused of killing a health insurance executive in Manhattan said the attorney general was putting “partisan politics over justice.”
April 11, 2025Updated 7:50 p.m. ET
Lawyers for Luigi Mangione asked a federal court on Friday to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against him, arguing that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recently announced decision to do so was “explicitly and unapologetically political.”
Mr. Mangione, 26, has been charged with the Dec. 4 fatal shooting of a health care executive, Brian Thompson, 50, as he was walking to an early morning conference at the New York Hilton Midtown. On April 1, Ms. Bondi announced that she had directed prosecutors to seek capital punishment in the case “as we carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”
Mr. Mangione’s lawyers argued that Ms. Bondi’s real motive in making the announcement was to garner press attention, noting that she discussed her decision in a “Fox News Sunday” interview and “publicly released her order so she would have ‘content’ for her newly launched Instagram account.”
They said she had also violated Justice Department protocols to ensure such decisions are made fairly and consistently. These protocols include letting defense lawyers make detailed written and oral presentations to a U.S. attorney’s office and Justice Department officials in Washington. A department committee generally issues a recommendation to the attorney general, who makes the final decision.
The lawyers said the Trump Justice Department ignored their request to take three months to investigate and prepare a thorough argument against the death penalty. The lawyers had been able to make written and oral presentations to the government only in January, in the waning days of the Biden administration.
“These are not normal times,” Mr. Mangione’s lawyers wrote.
By directing prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York to seek the death penalty “without affording even a modicum of process,” the lawyers said, Ms. Bondi was “being consistent with the new culture of the highest levels of the Justice Department, one that values personal will over process, publicity over discretion and partisan politics over justice.”
