Shortly before Luigi Mangione appeared in Manhattan federal court on Friday, prosecutors filed a document that made official something U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi expressed in April.
NOTICE OF INTENT TO SEEK THE DEATH PENALTY.
“The United States of America… notifies the Court and LUIGI NICHOLAS MANGIONE, the defendant, that the United States believes the circumstances of the offense… are such that, in the event of a conviction, a sentence of death is justified.”
A short time later, Mangione was led into Courtroom 110, the same one where Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were the defendants in one of New York City’s last big federal death penalty trials, in 1951. The Rosenbergs were both convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and executed, though their sons insisted that Ethel was innocent. Roy Cohn, then a federal prosecutor and always a fixer, later claimed credit for arranging to install both the assistant U.S. attorney who sought the death penalty and the judge who imposed it. Cohn went on to become a young Donald Trump’s lawyer and mentor.
Trump has long been a supporter of capital punishment. In 1989, the future president took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five after the teenagers were arrested for allegedly raping and beating a jogger. The five were not charged with a capital crime in the first place, and were subsequently exonerated after someone unknown to them gave a detailed confession backed by his DNA. Trump kept to Cohn’s edict to never apologize.
Now, the attorney general Trump appointed to do his legal bidding has set in motion an effort to execute the 26-year-old, who came into Courtroom 110 at 1 p.m. on Friday wearing a tan prison jumpsuit, his hands cuffed behind his back. Mangione was already facing a state murder charge for allegedly shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a sidewalk as he was about to attend an investor conference at a Midtown Manhattan hotel.
But there is no death penalty under New York State law. There is under federal law, and Mangione now stands to be tried twice for the same crime—with the express purpose of executing him. And the knowledge that he is now marked for death, just as he was starting out his adult life, made every detail about him more vivid as he approached the defense table and his handcuffs were removed. He was freshly barbered. His cheeks were clean-shaven, but his jaw was stubbled.
Mangione clearly takes his plight seriously, but he was not dark or brooding by default as he sat with his attorneys, who include lead counsel Karen Friedman Agnifilo and her husband, Marc Agnifilo. The accused killer at one point responded to something somebody said with a dimmer version of the distinctive smile that was captured by a hostel surveillance camera after a clerk asked him to lower his mask so she could see his face.
That fleeting glimpse of handsomeness had helped lead to Mangione’s capture, and here he was. He briefly turned to look around the courtroom, which he had not done during his arraignment in state court.
At 1 p.m., a clerk smacked a wooden door at the front of the courtroom three times with an open hand. Mangione rose along with everybody else.
“In the matter of Luigi Mangione, case number 25-CR176,” the clerk announced.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett entered and assumed the bench. She asked a still-standing Mangione if he had seen a copy of the indictment and he leaned toward a microphone set on the defense table. The peril he faces gave his voice an added ring as he responded with a single syllable.
“Yes,” he said.
The federal indictment had been made public on April 17, hours after stock in UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, began its biggest one-day drop since 1998—the very year the accused killer was born.
The stock was taking a further tumble when the judge asked Mangione how he pleaded. Mangione’s voice again had an added ring or mortality.
“Not guilty,” he replied.
Over the next half hour, the various parties worked out several procedural details. Friedman Agnifilo told the judge that she had a handshake deal with the prosecutors for the state case to go first, but that had changed now that the government was seeking the death penalty. She predicted that “Constitutional issues” would come into play if the federal case went first.
“We will set a schedule for this case as if it’s the only one,” the judge said.
After 35 minutes, the proceedings ended and everyone rose again as the judge left the courtroom. Marc Agnifilo placed a reassuring, paternal hand on Mangione’s shoulder. Agnifilo and his lead counsel wife are clearly forming a deep bond with their client.
Fundamental moral questions
Mangione’s case presents us with fundamental moral questions. Is it right to take a life even if you are trying to bring attention to a health insurance system that lets thousands die to facilitate making billions in profits? Is it right for the government to take a life, particularly when the motivation appears at least partly political?
When Bondi announced on April 1 that the feds would be seeking the death penalty, she said in a statement, “Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson—an innocent man and father of two young children—was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”
Those remarks elicited a response from Friedman Agnifilo.
“While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the premeditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” the lead defense counsel replied.
She added, “By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous health-care industry that continues to terrorize the American people.”
Two big box trucks with video screens on the side circled the federal courthouse on Friday, just as they had on the days Mangione was in the state courthouse. The screen showed images of Mangione’s wildly disproportionate perp walk, when he was flown into a downtown Manhattan heliport and led in shackles by an army of cops, agents, and even New York City Mayor Eric Adams (who would himself later appear in courtroom 110 under federal indictment, prior to Trump ordering his minions in the Justice Department to drop the case).
The box truck screens also showed the names and photos of people who have also suffered as a result of UnitedHealthcare’s alleged greed. These included Little John Cupp of Ohio. A wrongful death lawsuit filed by his wife, Christina Cupp, charges that he went into cardiac arrest and died on March 3, 2022, after UnitedHealthcare ruled a heart procedure recommended by his doctor was ”not medically necessary.”
But health insurance companies have fashioned a loophole via the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which was intended to establish minimum guidelines for private industry pension plans. This unintended loophole limits what health insurance companies pay in damages to no more than the cost of the denied procedure. In Cupp’s case, that meant the damages were limited to around $25,000, according to court papers.
“[ERISA] was never intended to be applied to the health insurance industry, and it is unfortunate that health insurance companies can utilize this legislation to avoid responsibility when improperly denying medically necessary treatments,” the Cupp family’s attorney, John Markus, told the Daily Beast.
Such tales, and Mangione’s charm, help explain why there has been surprising support for him, particularly among young women. A U.S. Marshal examined a standard box of Kleenex on the defense table prior to Friday’s arraignment, perhaps to check for love notes such as one a fan left in a pair of Mangione’s socks at a state proceeding.
As the two trials proceed with Mangione’s freedom and his very life at stake, one alternative to shooting CEOs—and a way to save lives—would be to agitate for closing loopholes like the one in ERISA.
