Luigi Mangione Death Penalty Bid May Pit Prosecutors Against Each Other

Luigi Mangione is being prosecuted for murder by two agencies: the Department of Justice, which answers to President Trump, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is led by the only prosecutor to convict President Trump.

Mr. Trump and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, are far from natural allies. And the high-profile case of Mr. Mangione, who is charged with killing a health care executive, could set their offices on a collision course.

When Mr. Mangione was arrested in December, before President Trump took office, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said the state prosecution would occur first. But last week, Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, signaled that the Justice Department might move quickly, saying that federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty for Mr. Mangione.

“The president’s directive was very clear: We are to seek the death penalty when possible,” Ms. Bondi said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”

Deliberations over whether to seek the federal death penalty can take a year or more in the Southern District and the Justice Department. Ms. Bondi’s swift announcement was all the more unusual given that Mr. Mangione has yet to be formally indicted in federal court.

Mr. Mangione’s case has become an arena for Ms. Bondi to show her commitment to the president. Her decision “is more political theater than anything else,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University.

“This is a way to grab some headlines and to show in a very public way Trump’s commitment to re-establishing the death penalty in federal prosecutions,” Ms. Bader said.

Mr. Mangione is charged with killing Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, outside the New York Hilton Midtown on Dec. 4. A far-reaching manhunt ended five days later when Mr. Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., and has pleaded not guilty.

Since his arrest, Mr. Mangione has garnered an outpouring of public support, with people attending his court hearings, making and buying clothing featuring his face, and raising more than $830,000 for his defense. The attack prompted many Americans to vent their dislike of the nation’s for-profit health system, and made Mr. Mangione a visible foil for an administration that says radicals are besieging the nation.

In her brief time as attorney general, Ms. Bondi has made putting Mr. Trump’s goals into action a cornerstone of her work. She issued 14 memos in her first days in office, in one urging “zealous” advocacy of Mr. Trump’s agenda. That agenda has included retribution against Mr. Trump’s perceived rivals, including Mr. Bragg.

Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, declined to comment.

In 2023, Mr. Bragg became the first prosecutor to win an indictment of a former president, charging Mr. Trump with 34 felonies related to hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign. Mr. Trump went to trial the following year and was convicted on all counts.

Ever since his indictment, Mr. Trump has railed against Mr. Bragg and promised more generally to take revenge on his adversaries. Ms. Bondi has assigned a working group to scrutinize what the administration calls the “weaponization” of the Justice Department against Mr. Trump. Part of that group’s work includes examining any federal involvement in Mr. Bragg’s prosecution of the president. There is no indication that Mr. Bragg’s case against Mr. Trump violated the law.

Ms. Bondi has been a staunch supporter of capital punishment since her time as Florida’s attorney general, when she supported a measure to speed up executions. Florida has the second highest number of people on death row in the nation, following California, according to a report by the Legal Defense Fund.

Death penalties in the federal system are harder to come by, and cases take an extended time. In Manhattan, where Mr. Mangione’s case will be heard, juries have been reluctant to sentence a defendant to death. The last federal executions in New York State, stemming from Southern District cases, were in the 1950s.

In federal cases that are eligible for a death sentence, prosecutors in a U.S. attorney’s office typically speak to the defendant’s lawyers before making a recommendation to a panel of Justice Department officials in Washington. The panel then makes a recommendation to the attorney general. The process can take months.

The speed of the announcement in the Mangione case is “a little bit reckless,” said Kathryn Miller, a professor and co-director of the criminal defense clinic at the Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan.

If the Trump administration is committed to seeking death in every eligible case, “they may end up running afoul of the Constitution,” Ms. Miller said, adding, “You’re supposed to be narrowing in the types of cases that you seek death for.”

One of Mr. Mangione’s lawyers, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, asserted in a statement last week that Southern District prosecutors had recommended against seeking the death penalty. She called the Justice Department’s decision to move ahead nonetheless political.

“Luigi is caught in a high-stakes game of tug of war between state and federal prosecutors,” she said.

Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the Southern District, which has been prosecuting Mr. Mangione’s federal case, declined to comment.

Mr. Mangione, who is being held in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, faces numerous criminal charges.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged him with first-degree murder and branded him a terrorist. Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Mangione with using a firearm to commit murder, which carries the potential sentence of death. He is also charged with gun crimes in Pennsylvania. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Mr. Bragg’s office said soon after Mr. Mangione was arrested that it was coordinating with federal law enforcement.

Such cooperation is typical between federal and state officials, who often have to negotiate overlapping responsibilities. Collaboration can involve sharing access to witness interviews, grand jury statements and subpoenaed documents. In Mr. Mangione’s case, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office have been gathering such evidence for months.

The Southern District, when it charged Mr. Mangione, thanked the district attorney’s office, adding that it expected the state prosecution to proceed before the federal case. Now, however, Ms. Bondi has taken an aggressive stance, one that could prompt friction in Manhattan.

“Perhaps this is intended as making a play for the case to be tried first in federal court,” said Daniel C. Richman, a professor of law at Columbia University and a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan. “But there’s no reason to expect that the Manhattan district attorney’s office would see it that way.”

Jonah E. Bromwich and Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.