Shortly before Luigi Mangione appeared in Manhattan federal court on Friday, prosecutors there filed a document that made official an intent U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi expressed back in April.
NOTICE OF INTENT TO SEEK THE DEATH PENALTY.
“The United States of America… notifies the Court and LUIGI NICHOLAS MANGIONE, the defendant, that the United States believes the circumstances of the offense… are such that, in the event of a conviction, a sentence of death is justified.”
A short time later, Mangione was led into Courtroom 110, the very same one where Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were the defendants in one of New York City’s last big federal death penalty trials back in 1951. The Rosenbergs were both convicted of spying for the Russians and executed, though their sons insisted that Ethel was innocent. Roy Cohn, then a federal prosecutor and always a fixer, later claimed credit for arranging to install both the assistant U.S. attorney who sought the death penalty and the judge who imposed it. Cohn later became a twenty-something Donald Trump’s lawyer and mentor.
Trump has long been a big proponent of capital punishment. In 1989, the future president took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five after the teenagers were arrested for allegedly raping and beating a jogger. The five were not charged with a capital crime in the first place and were subsequently exonerated after someone unknown to them gave a detailed confession backed by his DNA. Trump kept to Cohn’s edict to never apologize.
Now, the attorney general Trump appointed to do his legal bidding has set in motion an effort to execute the 26-year-old who came into Courtroom 110 at 1 p.m. on Friday in a tan prison jumpsuit. Mangione was already facing a state murder charge for allegedly shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a sidewalk as he was about to attend an investor conference at a Midtown Manhattan hotel.
But there is no death penalty under New York State law. There is under federal law, and Mangione now stands to be tried twice for the same crime—all with the express purpose of putting him in the death chamber. And the knowledge that he is now marked for death, just as he was starting out his adult life, made every detail about him more vivid as he approached the defense table. He was freshly barbered. His cheeks were clean-shaven, but his jaw was stubbled.
Mangione clearly takes his plight seriously, but he was not dark or brooding by default as he sat with his attorneys, who include lead counsel Karen Friedman Agnifilo and her husband, Marc Agnifilo. The accused killer at one point responded to something somebody said with a dimmed version of the distinctive smile that was captured by a hostel surveillance camera after a clerk asked him to lower his mask so she could see his face.
That fleeting glimpse of handsomeness helped lead to Mangione’s capture, and here he was. He briefly turned to look around the courtroom, which he had not done during his arraignment in state court.
At 1 p.m., a clerk smacked a wooden door at the front of the courtroom three times with an open hand. Mangione rose along with everybody else.
“In the matter of Luigi Mangione, case number 25-CR176,” the clerk announced.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett entered and assumed the bench. She asked a still-standing Mangione if he had seen a copy of the indictment and he leaned toward a microphone set on the defense table. The peril he faces gave an added ring to his voice as he responded with a single syllable.
“Yes,” he said.
The federal indictment had been made public on April 17, hours after stock in UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, began its biggest one-day drop since 1998—the very year the accused killer was born.
The stock was taking a further tumble when the judge asked Mangione how he pleaded. Mangione’s voice again had that added ring of mortality.
“Not guilty,” he replied.
Over the next half hour, the various parties worked out several procedural details. Friedman Agnifilo told the judge that she had a handshake deal with the prosecutors for the state case to go first, but that had changed now that the government was seeking the death penalty. She predicts that “Constitutional issues” would come into play if the federal case goes first.
“We will set a schedule for this case as if it’s the only one,” the judge said.
After 35 minutes, the proceedings ended and everyone rose again as the judge left the courtroom. Marc Agnifilo placed a reassuring, paternal hand on Mangione’s shoulder. Agnifilo and his lead counsel wife are clearly forming a deep bond with their client, who stands among encroaching shadows in the first big capital case in New York since the Rosenbergs were condemned within these same walls seven decades ago.
Mangione’s case presents us with fundamental moral quotations. Is it right to take a life even if you are trying to bring attention to a health insurance system that lets thousands die to facilitate making ever more billions in profits? Is it right for the government to take a life, most particularly when the motivation is at least partly political?
When Bondi announced back on April 1 that the feds would be seeking the death penalty, she said in a statement, “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.”
“While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the premeditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” Friedman Agnifilo replied.
She added, “By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people.”
Two big box trucks with video screens on the side circled the federal courthouse on Friday, just as they had on the days Mangione was in the state courthouse. The screen showed images of Mangione’s wildly disproportionate perp walk, when he was flown into a downtown Manhattan heliport and led in shackles by an army of cops, agents, and even New York City Mayor Eric Adams (who would himself later appear in courtroom 110 under federal indictment, prior to Trump ordering his minions in the Justice Department to drop the case).
The box truck screens also showed the names and photos of people who have also allegedly fallen victim to UnitedHealthcare’s greed. These included Little John Cupp of Ohio. A wrongful death lawsuit filed by his wife, Christina Cupp, charges that he went into cardiac arrest and died on March 3, 2022 after UnitedHealthcare ruled a heart procedure recommended by his doctor was ”not medically necessary.”
But health insurance companies have fashioned a loophole via the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which was intended to establish minimum guidelines for private industry pension plans. Health insurance companies twisted it into a loophole that, in circumstances such as Cupp’s, limits damages to the cost of the denied procedure. In this instance, that meant around $25,000, according to court papers.
“[ERISA] was never intended to be applied to the health insurance industry, and it is unfortunate that health insurance companies can utilize this legislation to avoid responsibility when improperly denying medically necessary treatments,” the Cupp family’s attorney, John Markus, told The Daily Beast.
Such tales, and Mangione’s charm, help explain why there has been remarkable support for him, particularly among young women. A U.S. Marshal examined a standard box of Kleenex on the defense table prior to Friday’s arraignment, perhaps to check for love notes such as one a fan left in a pair of Mangione’s socks at a state proceeding.
As the two trials proceed with Mangione’s freedom and very life at stake, one alternative to shooting CEOs—and a way to save lives—would be to agitate for closing loopholes like the one in ERISA.
The post Opinion: Luigi Mangione Is a Murder Suspect and a Morality Tale appeared first on The Daily Beast.
