Prosecutors liken Luigi Mangione to Manhattan mass shooter to defend death penalty

MANHATTAN (CN) — Federal prosecutors on Wednesday likened Luigi Mangione, the Maryland man suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year, to the deceased gunman behind a chilling mass shooting in Manhattan earlier this summer that killed four.

The comparison came in a footnote to a new filing in Mangione’s federal case, where prosecutors are defending their bid to pursue the death penalty for Thompson’s killing.

They claim that Shane Tamura, the man who strutted into a Manhattan high-rise on July 28 and killed four people inside, then shot himself, left evidence behind at the crime scene in a similar fashion to Mangione.

“Like Mangione, Tamura left behind a piece of evidence for investigators to find, blaming the NFL and football for causing chronic traumatic encephalopathy,” prosecutors wrote in the filing Wednesday. “Almost immediately, members of the public sympathetic to [Mangione] touted Tamura’s actions as a laudable continuation of the defendant’s philosophy.”

To prove this claim, prosecutors cited an article from the online publication City Journal — a public policy magazine and website run by the conservative Manhattan Institute — which argued that political violence against powerful CEOs is on the rise.

Prosecutors compared the note found in Tamura’s pocket following the shooting, which claimed that he suffered from CTE from high school football and encouraged scientists to study his brain, to the messages they claim Mangione left on bullet casings at the scene of Thompson’s murder.

“In preparing for the crime, the defendant took the time to write the words ‘Deny,’ ‘Depose,’ and ‘Delay’ on the bullets he used — two of which were recovered at the scene of the murder as shell casings (because the bullets had been fired) and one of which was recovered as a live round,” they wrote.

Prosecutors were responding to a July motion from Mangione, who is seeking an “informational outline” detailing why he is being tried for the death penalty.

In that motion, Mangione claims he has only been provided with “barebones, vague allegations, lacking any information about the facts upon which the government intends to rely.”

He also argues that he hardly poses enough of a “future danger” to justify capital punishment, as much of his online support is based on a political and social opposition to the for-profit healthcare industry.

Prosecutors disagree.

“The defendant’s capacity for future dangerousness is … demonstrated by the careful steps he took to prepare for the attack and plan his escape,” they wrote Wednesday. “He traveled from another state under a false identity, secured lodging with a forged identification, surveilled Thompson in the days before the murder, wore a surgical mask for days on end, nearly without exception, to hide his identity, and armed himself with a homemade ghost gun.”

“These actions show not only the deliberate planning of this murder but also the defendant’s ability to deceive, to acquire lethal weapons through unlawful means, and to evade detection,” they added. “Those same characteristics make him exceptionally dangerous in the future.”

Of Mangione’s claim that he has been provided with “no facts” in support of the government’s death penalty argument, prosecutors say that assertion is “misplaced.” They pointed to journals they claim were on Mangione’s person at his arrest in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, which outline his intent to “wack” a health insurance CEO like Thompson.

“Thompson was not a random passerby. The defendant hunted Thompson down to kill him because Thompson was the CEO of a major health insurance company,” prosecutors wrote. “That is, Thompson was the leader of a company in an industry that the defendant was fixated upon harming.”

Prosecutors say they’ve already shown plenty of evidence to support their pursuit of the death penalty and are looking to a federal judge to shoot down Mangione’s request for more information.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in April that the Justice Department would be seeking capital punishment for Mangione, more than two weeks before he was indicted by a federal grand jury, as part of President Donald Trump’s broader initiative to “make America safe again.”

“Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” Bondi said in a statement on April 1. “I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and make America safe again.”

Mangione faces two counts of stalking, a firearms offense and murder through the use of a firearm. He also faces charges in New York Supreme Court, including first-degree murder as an act of terrorism.

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