The United States attorney general has called on prosecutors to seek the death penalty for 2020 Engineering graduate Luigi Mangione (Photo Courtesy of Penn Engineering).
United States Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the federal case against 2020 Engineering graduate Luigi Mangione, per a press release from the Department of Justice.
In December 2024, Mangione was charged with murder as an act of terrorism in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In an April 1 press release, Bondi called the murder an “act of political violence” and added that because the act “took place in public with bystanders nearby,” it may have posed a risk to individuals other than Thompson.
“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. After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” the press release read.
Shortly after Mangione’s arrest, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicted him on federal and state charges, including first-degree murder “in furtherance of terrorism,” two counts of second-degree murder — one of which was classified as an act of terrorism — and eight other weapons and forgery offenses.
At his arraignment in the New York State Supreme Court on Dec. 23, 2024, Mangione pleaded not guilty to all 11 state charges against him. A week earlier, he also entered a plea of not guilty to federal charges from the Southern District of New York, including murder with a firearm — which carried with it the possibility of the death penalty — two counts of stalking, and a separate firearms offense.
The state of Pennsylvania also charged him with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery, and the providing of false identification to police.
Authorities linked Mangione’s actions to his opposition to the health care industry, citing a 262-word note recovered at the time of his arrest. In the document, he described Thompson’s killing as a way to broadly challenge corruption within UnitedHealthcare.
While a student at Penn, Mangione was a member of Phi Kappa Psi, a University-affiliated fraternity. He suffered from mental and physical health problems, which he claimed in a social media post were exacerbated by his fraternity’s “hell week” — the final week of intense pledging ahead of initiation.
Mangione posted frequently on Reddit about his difficulty maintaining focus amid exhaustion and brain fog and attributed his decline in academic success to these issues.
“It’s absolutely brutal to have such a life-halting issue,” Mangione wrote of his brain fog in a Reddit post. “The people around you probably won’t understand your symptoms — they certainly don’t for me.”
In screenshots of texts and voice memos obtained exclusively by The Daily Pennsylvanian, a current Phi Kappa Psi brother said the new member education process for the fraternity included binge drinking and eating. According to the texts, the pledges had to “solve an ACT for [a] 36, straight drunk” and were “stuck” in a basement.
In a voice memo, the brother described an eating event as “really nasty” and said his “stomach [hurt] a lot.” The texts also included a screenshot of a 9.07-mile pledging run the student tracked on a fitness application.
In 2016, Mangione founded Penn’s Game Research and Development Environment, also known as UPGRADE. The game development club aimed to “foster creative expression and cultivate career skills for the artists, programmers, and creatives interested in game development in the Penn community” and grew to include over 50 members.
Staff reporter Riana Mahtani contributed reporting.
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