Pam Bondi’s push for the death penalty in Luigi Mangione’s case is not about justice

On Tuesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced what seems to be the second Trump administration’s capital prosecution. For a president who loves creating a stir, it’s little surprise that the announcement made such a big splash. That is why the administration chose Luigi Mangione to be its death penalty poster boy. Who better to help the president’s full-throated embrace of capital punishment than one of America’s most infamous alleged killers?

Recall Magione’s arrest and the sensation that led up to it. Here’s the way Bondi described what Mangione is accused of: “Luigi Mangione,” she said, “stalked and murdered UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024. The murder was an act of political violence.” Bondi continued this was a “cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.” 

But shock was not the only reaction to the killing.

Some Americans celebrated it as revenge against a ruthless or indifferent health care system. They treated Magione like a folk hero, America’s Robin Hood. And as CNN reports, “Mangione has received widespread support from a growing fan base, raising more than $700,000 toward his legal bills.”

That support is why the decision to seek the death penalty made headlines here and abroad.

The federal government has jurisdiction in Mangione's case because he allegedly crossed state lines to commit his crime. But there was something odd and contradictory in Bondi’s explanation of her decision. 

On the one hand, she said that she decided only after “careful consideration.” On the other, she paid homage its political basis. 

In Bondi’s view, putting Mangione to death would “carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.” 

The death penalty is serious business. It is bad enough when politicians use it to throw red meat during campaigns. Still, it is shocking when the Attorney General of the United States does so. It indicates how little regard for the jurisprudence of capital punishment.

The Supreme Court has been clear that where death is a possible punishment, government officials must exercise the utmost care lest anyone be treated unfairly or prosecuted to satisfy political imperatives. As the Death Penalty Information Center explains, “In the 1970s, the United States Supreme Court famously declared that ​‘death is different’ from all other punishments, and, as such, required the provision of heightened procedural safeguards to ensure that its application was not cruel or unusual.”

That is why before January 20, 2025, when President Trump returned to the White House, the Department of Justice went through an elaborate process if any federal prosecutor wanted to move forward with a capital prosecution. Before they could do so, the department’s Capital Case Section conducted a painstaking and thorough review of any such recommendation. 

It did so to assist “the Attorney General's Review Committee on Capital Cases in its evaluation of capital cases submitted by United States Attorneys to the Department of Justice for review and recommendation to the Attorney General concerning the appropriateness of seeking the death penalty.”  The Capital Case Section analyzed “the factual and legal issues that are relevant to the Committee's recommendation to the Attorney General whether to seek the death penalty.”

Just laying out those steps shows how methodical the decision to proceed with a capital prosecution has been. But Bondi is moving in a different direction.

Instead of waiting for line prosecutors to decide for themselves whether to seek the death penalty, she directed them to “seek the death penalty…for the most serious, readily provable offenses.” She even ordered the Capital Review Committee to go back through the Biden administration's decisions not to seek the death penalty in the hope of finding cases where the new administration could still do so.

It seems bloodthirsty. That is the style of the Justice Department that wants Mangione dead.

But make no mistake, impatience with the deliberative approach to death penalty decisions emanates from the Oval Office. On day one of his second term, President Trump showed his hand when he issued an Executive Order restoring federal death penalty prosecutions and executions.

His order declared, “It is the policy of the United States to…counteract the politicians and judges who subvert the law by obstructing and preventing the execution of capital sentences…” It directed the attorney general to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use... regardless of other factors…”

But, it was precisely those other factors, including careful consideration of the defendant’s background and the social and psychological circumstances that might help explain why they committed a capital crime, that traditionally have been cornerstones of prosecutorial charging and jury sentencing decisions. Without attending to those things, the death penalty process becomes an assembly line rather than an example of individualized judgment driven by a commitment to making the punishment fit the criminal as well as the crime.

That brings us back to Mangione. 

There is a long way to go before he faces the real prospect of execution. First, as CNN notes, Mangione will be tried in New York on state charges. 

He was indicted there “on 11 counts, including one count of murder in the first degree and two counts of murder in the second degree, along with other weapons and forgery charges. He faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted on the state charges.”

Only then would the feds get their shot. However, the Trump administration seems determined to wait its turn, no matter what New York does in Mangione’s case.

Even if he is convicted and sentenced to death in a federal trial, it would be years before he would be executed, assuming any conviction stood up on appeal. Still, the attorney general and the president want to score points now merely by announcing that they want Mangione to die.

As his lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, points out, the government’s desire to do so is not just bad for her client. It is bad for this country. She calls that desire “political.” Moreover, in Mangione's case, Bondi’s decision to seek the death penalty “goes against the recommendation of the local federal prosecutors, the law, and historical precedent.” We have already seen more than enough of such behavior from the Trump administration in other areas; now, we see it when someone’s life is on the line. As Agnifilo puts it, the Justice Department’s push for the death penalty shows it has “moved from the dysfunctional to the barbaric.”

And that should worry all of us, both those who think of Mangione as a cold-blooded killer or as Robin Hood.