Defense attorneys for Luigi Mangione are arguing that Attorney General Pam Bondi is seeking the death penalty for their client as “content” for a new Instagram account, according to a Friday court filing.
“She ordered the death penalty and publicly released her order so she would have ‘content’ for her newly launched Instagram account,” Mangione’s attorneys wrote.
The defense team is asking the court to block the government from seeking the death penalty. They argue that Bondi’s announcement of the move was a “political stunt” and that she failed to indicate Mangione’s presumption of innocence.
They say that her death penalty media blitz on April 1 has “prejudiced” the potential pool of grand jurors against their client, who has yet to be indicted on federal charges.
“The stakes could not be higher,” the lawyers said. “The United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Mangione, 26, a former Ivy Leaguer, stands accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside of a Manhattan hotel last December. The software engineer was arrested in a high-profile manhunt after the brazen shooting.
In announcing that she would seek the death penalty against Mangione, Bondi issued a press release, appeared on Fox News, and posted on a new Instagram account.
A post shared by U.S. Department of Justice (@thejusticedept)
“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,” Bondi wrote in a statement. “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 defense argues Bondi’s words would be “inappropriate and prejudicial in any context” but are especially improper for an attorney general issuing a direction to prosecutors, which they say could have been done out of the public eye.
“The Court simply cannot sit back and do nothing while a grand jury is convened which has been exposed to this sort of malicious, intentional prejudice,” the lawyers said. “Not in any case much less a capital case.”
Federally, Mangione is charged with murder by firearm, two counts of stalking, and an additional gun charge. He is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, which also houses alleged sex offender and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
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