NEW YORK – The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi, pushed through a federal indictment in order to seek the death penalty in the assassination of Minnesota health insurance executive Brian Thompson. The man accused of the crime, Luigi Mangione, also had been charged under New York state law, which prohibits capital punishment as savage and cruel. The Bondi-engineered federal indictment trumps a trial in the state court to go for blood. It’s not clear what course that Mangione’s defense attorneys will take in the case. While no one endorses assassinations, Mangione nonetheless has become a folk hero in raising grass roots attention to insurance company greed that delays and denies claims from policy holders. Mangione, age 26, suffers chronic back pain that’s been uncovered by insurance.
Earlier: Judge sets calendar Mangione assassination case
Earlier: Arrest made in Minnesota insurance executive slaying
Earlier: Earlier: Minnesota insurance exec assassinated
Capital punishment
Eye-for-am-eye death penalties, once universal, have been abandoned in 23 states. These include Minnesota and fellow Upper Midwest states Illinois, Iowa, Michigan,North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Federal-level executions, although still allowed, have become rare. In 2024. President Biden commuted the federal death sentences of 37 prisoners, leaving only three on death row. In the modern era there have been only 13 federal executions, all in a six-month period between July 2020 and January 2021.