Luigi Mangione , the person accused of killing the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. Thompson was killed while walking in New York City on December 4th 2025, and a few days after the shooting, Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He was evicted on eleven state charges and four federal charges, including first-degree murder, terrorism, criminal possession of a weapon, and stalking. Federal prosecutors have been seeking the death penalty.
A federal judge addressed a possible death penalty charge in 2020. Then, on Jan 9th, the pretrial was Mangione’s first appearance in federal court since his April 2025 arraignment.
Recently, Mangione’s lawyers accused authorities of publicly vowing to seek the death penalty before Mangione’s indictment and turning his arrest into a “Marvel movie” spectacle. They also argued that two of the 13 total charges against him, including murder by firearm, are legally flawed. The prosecution contested the defense’s claims, arguing that “Pretrial publicity, even when intense, is not itself a constitutional defect.”
At the conference, Garnett said she would rule on the defense’s request to drop death penalty charges and exclude certain evidence from the case proceedings at a later hearing, since then Garnett has been successful in blocking the death penalty punishment for Mangione. Evidence the defense hopes to exclude from trial includes the gun that police matched with the one used to kill Thompson, a notebook in which Mangione reportedly decried his desire to “wack” a health insurance executive. Mangione’s defense argues that since police had not obtained a warrant before accessing that evidence, its inclusion in the case is illegal.
The pretrial appearance followed a three-week-long hearing in New York state court, which focused on whether the court would consider the weapon and notebook as evidence. In the state case, Judge Gregory Carro provided the defense a Jan. 29 deadline to finalize a written argument and gave the prosecution until March 5 to submit its argument. After the prosecution’s submission, the defense will have two weeks to submit a reply.
The state hearing also revealed some previously unseen bodycam footage of police officers searching Mangione’s personal belongings, including handwritten notes that prosecutors characterized as a to-do list, as well as possible “escape routes.”
In September 2025, Carro cleared Mangione of two New York state terrorism charges and ruled that they were “legally insufficient”. Mangione still faces charges of second-degree murder in New York, which if convicted, carries a 25-year sentence.
Graduating from University of Pennsylvania, Mangione studied at the School of Engineering and Applied Science and founded UPGRADE, the university’s first game development club. He graduated in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in computer and information science.
