Attorneys for Luigi Mangione asked a judge to stop federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against their client, saying the U.S. government “intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt.”
The motion filed Friday in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the death penalty to “carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”
Mangione, 26, who faces state murder and terrorism charges in New York, along with federal murder and stalking charges, is accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year in New York City.
The death penalty is ethically wrong to me because you can’t trust the system 100%, even in the best case. Death row inmates have been exonerated with additional evidence, or just better processing of existing evidence, or other reasons. Unless the judicial system is 100% accurate (which, spoiler, it neither is nor possibly can be), you introduce the possibility of executing innocent people, which should be abhorrent to everyone.