BBC News, Washington DC
The American prosecutors will ask for the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of having shot the dead CEO of Unitedhealthcare, Brian Thompson, in December.
The Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Tuesday that she had ordered federal prosecutors to ask for the capital punishment for “the premeditated composure assassination”.
Mr. Thompson was killed in front of a hotel in New York on December 4. Police arrested Mr. Mangione, 26, a few days later in Pennsylvania after a man hunting nationally.
He pleaded not guilty to state accusations and has not yet pleaded for distinct federal charges. He is waiting for his trial in a New York prison.
In the press release, Bondi said that the murder of Mr. Thompson “was an act of political violence” and that he “could have presented a serious risk of death for additional” nearby.
Investigators say that Mr. Mangione was motivated to kill Mr. Thompson, 50, due to the anger of American health insurance companies.
A lawyer for Mr. Mangione described the “barbarian” decision, “the government accused” defending the broken, immoral and murderous health care industry “, and said that Mr. Mangione had been taken in a standoff between state prosecutors and federal.
“While pretending to protect itself against murder, the federal government is moving to commit the pre-sudden murder and sponsored by the state of Luigi,” Karen Friedman Agnifilo said in a statement.
Mangione faces 11 state criminal charges in New York, including murder and first -degree murder as a crime of terrorism.
If he is found guilty of all the counts, he would risk a compulsory prison sentence without the possibility of parole.
But federal prosecutors also charged Mr. Mangione separately for having used a firearm to commit murder and interstate harassment leading to death. These accusations make him eligible for the death penalty.
Prosecutors have said that federal and state affairs will progress parallel to each other.
EPAMr. Mangione is detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) Brooklyn.
New York prosecutors have already shared evidence in their case against him, including a positive match of his fingerprints with those discovered at crime.
According to the prosecutor of the New York District Alvin Bragg, Mr. Mangione arrived in New York on November 24 and stayed in a Manhattan inn using a false identity document for 10 days before attacking Mr. Thompson.
The patron of health care was shot down by a hidden attacker on December 4 while he was heading for a hotel where the company he led held an investor meeting.
A national search led the police to Mr. Mangione five days later in a McDonald’s hundreds of kilometers in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Police said that when they found Mongione, he was in possession of a ghost pistol – a firearm assembled from not found parts – a false identity document, a passport and a handwritten document indicating “motivation and state of mind”.
The murder of Mr. Thompson sparked a difficult debate on the functioning of the American health system.
Some Americans, who pay more for health care than people from any other country, have expressed their anger with regard to what they consider as an unfair treatment of insurance companies.
The American Secretary of Internal Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, said in December that rhetoric on social networks following the murder was “extraordinarily alarming”.
“He talks about what really boils here in this country, and unfortunately, we see it manifesting itself by violence, the violent domestic extremism that exists,” he told CBS The Nation.
