A federal judge on Jan. 30 dismissed the only death-penalty-eligible charges against Luigi Mangione, the man on trial for killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, ruling that prosecutors could no longer seek capital punishment in the case.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett ruled that two of four federal counts against Mangione must be thrown out: a charge alleging murder through the use of a firearm during a crime of violence and a related firearms offense involving a silencer.
These were the only death-penalty-eligible charges in the federal indictment. The judge noted that the "chief practical effect" of the ruling is to foreclose the death penalty as a punishment option.
In the federal indictment, those charges were the only two that carried the possibility of the death penalty. In her Opinion & Order, Garnett wrote that the “chief practical effect” of her ruling is “solely to foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury.”
Two other federal counts — including interstate stalking and use of electronic communications to cause death — remain pending. If convicted, Mangione could still face a maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The judge’s decision centered on a legal technicality in how federal law defines a “crime of violence.” Prosecutors argued that the December 2024 killing occurred during the commission of stalking, which they said qualified as such a crime. Garnett rejected that argument, citing Supreme Court precedent holding that an offense must require the use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force to meet the legal standard.
Because stalking can be committed without physical force, the judge ruled, it could not serve as the predicate offense needed to sustain the murder-through-a-crime-of-violence and firearms counts.
Garnett acknowledged that the decision “may strike the average person — and indeed many lawyers and judges — as tortured and strange, and the result may seem contrary to our intuitions about the criminal law." However, she was bound by her "committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case,” and added that “the law must be the Court’s only concern.”
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. He has also pleaded not guilty to separate state charges in New York, including second-degree murder, which carry the possibility of life imprisonment but do not allow for the death penalty.
The federal ruling does not affect the ongoing state prosecution.