Mangione pleads not responsible in killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO

[ad_1] Luigi Mangione pleaded not responsible on Friday to federal costs of gunning down medical health insurance government Brian Thompson, a day after prosecutors formally acknowledged their intent to hunt the demise penalty.

Mangione, 26, wore a tan jail-issued T-shirt as he was led into the packed decrease Manhattan courtroom. He beforehand pleaded not responsible to a separate set of New York state costs over the Dec. 4 killing of Thompson, the previous CEO of UnitedHealth Group's insurance coverage unit UnitedHealthcare.

He entered the plea at an arraignment earlier than U.S. District Decide Margaret Garnett.

U.S. prosecutors formally instructed a court docket on Thursday that they plan to hunt the demise penalty for Mangione.

In justifying their choice, prosecutors wrote of their submitting that Mangione "presents a future hazard as a result of he expressed an intent to focus on a whole trade, and rally political and social opposition to that trade, by participating in an act of deadly violence."

U.S. Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi earlier this month introduced that the Justice Division would search the demise penalty for Mangione. The court docket submitting on Thursday by the Manhattan U.S. legal professional's workplace formalizes prosecutors' intent to impose the demise penalty.

Mangione's attorneys have mentioned Bondi's April 1 announcement was "unapologetically political" and breached authorities protocols for demise penalty choices.

If Mangione is convicted within the federal case, the jury would decide in a separate part of the trial whether or not to suggest the demise penalty. Any such advice have to be unanimous, and the decide could be required to impose it.

WATCH l UnitedHealth government understands frustration at 'patchwork' insurance coverage system: Well being-care CEO acknowledges 'flawed' system after killing of Brian Thompson | Canada Tonight

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty mourned the killing of government Brian Thompson and mentioned he understood public frustrations with the 'flawed' U.S. health-care system on Friday, in a New York Instances opinion piece. It was his first public remark since Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth's medical health insurance unit, was shot useless final week. Thompson was shot useless on Dec. 4 exterior a resort in midtown Manhattan, the place the corporate was gathering for an investor convention. The brazen killing and ensuing five-day manhunt captivated People.

Cops in Altoona, Pa., discovered Mangione with a 9-mm pistol and silencer, clothes that matched the attire worn by Thompson's shooter in surveillance footage and a pocket book describing an intent to "wack" an insurance coverage firm CEO, based on a court docket submitting.

Some People have cheered Mangione, who was not recognized to be a UnitedHealth buyer or shopper, saying he drew consideration to steep U.S. health-care prices and the facility of well being insurers to refuse cost for some therapies.

Mangione is being held in federal lockup in Brooklyn.

WATCH | Folks flock to New York courthouse the place Mangione is showing: Crowds flock to Luigi Mangione’s NYC court docket look

A crowd of individuals, many supporters, flocked to a New York Metropolis courthouse, the place Luigi Mangione pleaded not responsible to costs of first-degree homicide and terrorism within the demise of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The choice to hunt the demise penalty revives a follow seen within the first Donald Trump administration, when 13 executions had been carried out between July 2020 and January 2021.

Previous to that, there'd been 17-year pause in executions of federal inmates, with none carried out throughout the presidency of Barack Obama or throughout the second time period of George W. Bush.

Legal professional Basic Merrick Garland in Joe Biden's administration instituted a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 pending a evaluation of procedures, though two demise penalty circumstances with origins that predated the Biden presidency continued — one involving an antisemitic gunman who murdered 11 individuals at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and one other for the accused in a Buffalo grocery store mass taking pictures.

The Justice Division beneath Garland declined to pursue the demise penalty in different mass killings, together with the gunman motivated by a hatred of immigrants who killed 23 individuals at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019. That gunman, Patrick Crusius, was sentenced this week to life in jail.