Luigi Mangione, the young man accused of the December 2024 shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, will not face the death penalty after a federal judge has dismissed two charges against him that carried the death penalty.
Judge for the Southern District of New York Margaret Garnett has dismissed two charges against him, one of them for violation of the weapons law and another for murder with a firearmthe latter being the one that made him eligible for the death sentence, as reported by CNN.
Likewise, he has also ruled that evidence recovered from his backpack at the time of his arrest be included in the judicial process. The jury selection process will begin on September 8 and the case is expected to begin on October 13.
Mangione also faces a separate murder charge in a court in New York, a state that does not have the death penalty, although the judge has not yet set a trial date. He has pleaded not guilty in both trials.
The young man, in the state of Pennsylvania, five days after allegedly shooting to death Thompson, 50, in front of the Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan. The businessman, with a two-decade career in the insurance company, assumed the direction of UnitedHealthcare’s insurance division in 2021.
Investigators suspect that Mangione acted motivated by resentment towards the private health insurance industry in the United States, denounced on numerous occasions for almost by default rejecting claims from its own clients.
