U.S. indicts Mangione in killing of health insurance executive

A federal grand jury has returned a four-count indictment against Luigi Mangione, the man accused in the Dec. 4 killing of a health care executive in Manhattan, the government said Thursday.

Mangione was originally charged after his arrest in a federal complaint, but the indictment and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s April 1 announcement that prosecutors will seek the death penalty suggest the Trump Justice Department is moving more aggressively toward a trial.

“The president’s directive was very clear: We are to seek the death penalty when possible,” Bondi said April 6 on “Fox News Sunday.”

The indictment, returned in U.S. District Court, means a federal grand jury has found probable cause to charge Mangione, a relatively low threshold of proof but one that is required under the Fifth Amendment for a felony prosecution to proceed. Along with the indictment comes the assignment of a judge, who will rule on motions and disputes and supervise any trial and death penalty proceeding.

The indictment levies no additional charges against Mangione, 26, who the authorities say carried out the brazen killing of the executive, Brian Thompson, 50, as Thompson walked to an early morning conference at a midtown Manhattan hotel. Mangione was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and was returned to New York to face charges. He is expected to be arraigned on the federal indictment soon.

For some, Mangione’s case has become a magnet for anger at the nation’s privatized health care system; his most recent appearance in the Manhattan criminal courthouse attracted hundreds of supporters, some lining the hallways and others protesting outside.

He has also been deluged with correspondence in the federal jail in Brooklyn where he is being held, and his lawyers have created a website to provide information about his case. An online fundraising page set up to benefit his legal defense lists donations totaling more than $900,000 as of Thursday.

Mangione’s lawyers had no comment on the indictment Thursday. One of his attorneys, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, said April 1, the day Bondi made her announcement, that seeking the death penalty in the case amounted to “premeditated, state-sponsored murder” intended to protect the “broken, immoral” health care industry.

Mangione is facing parallel prosecutions in New York, which began when he was first indicted by the office of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, on a count of first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, which carries a potential life prison sentence without parole, and other charges. Mangione has pleaded not guilty.

Two days later, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said it had charged Mangione in U.S. District Court with using a firearm to commit murder, which carries a potential death penalty. At the time, the U.S. attorney’s office said Bragg’s case was “currently expected to proceed to trial before the federal case.”

One reason may have been the complexities of prosecuting a federal death penalty case, which can take a year or longer to go to trial. That includes a period in which defense lawyers can make detailed presentations to the local U.S. attorney’s office and the Justice Department in Washington to argue against capital punishment.

Mangione’s lawyers recently filed a legal brief accusing Bondi of violating established protocols in announcing her decision without affording the defense a fair chance to be heard. They asked that prosecutors be precluded from seeking the death penalty in the case.

The lawyers, including Agnifilo and Avi Moskowitz, said their request to the Justice Department to have three months to investigate and prepare a comprehensive “mitigation submission” arguing against the death penalty was ignored.

The lawyers said they were able to offer written and oral presentations to the government only before President Donald Trump assumed office and the Justice Department’s leadership changed.

The lawyers argued that Bondi’s decision was “explicitly and unapologetically political.” They cited her Fox News interview and they claimed that she released her decision publicly “so she would have ‘content’ for her newly launched Instagram account.”

Prosecutors responded in a court filing that Mangione’s lawyers had cited no legal authority for the idea that they could prevent the government from seeking capital punishment before indictment.

The prosecutors added that the request was premature because there was not yet an indictment and they had not even filed a formal notice with the court that the government would seek capital punishment.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.