Mangione’s attorneys said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi violated his rights to due process by abandoning normal procedures for seeking the death penalty, and that Bondi prejudiced the pool of grand jurors who will be asked by prosecutors to indict Mangione. “The stakes could not be higher. The United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt,” Mangione’s attorneys wrote in a new filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Attorneys for Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, asked a federal judge in New York on Friday to block Attorney General Pam Bondi from seeking the death penalty if their client is convicted.
The View's panel had a rare moment of agreement as they all said alleged CEO assassin Luigi Mangione does not deserve the death penalty if convicted. The panelists agreed that Mangione could be rehabilitated as they discussed attorney general Pam Bondi's decision to seek the death penalty for federal charges the 24-year-old alleged killer is facing. 'I personally think if convicted, Luigi Mangione should spend his life in jail. I do not see him as a candidate for the death penalty,' said Alyssa Farah Griffin, the lone conservative on the panel. 'He's a first-time offender and he's young. He's somebody prison systems are meant to rehabilitate and to punish. He is somebody who could be rehabilitated while serving his sentence of life in jail,' she added. Co-host Sara Haines echoed the sentiment, explaining that life in prison would be a worse punishment than death. 'Our federal maximum security prisons are not a fun place to be, and that's where he would be,' Haine said. 'I tend to think the greater punishment in what he did is to stay alive and live with that. I’m a big believer in people having to live with themselves and the choices they’ve made, and their surrounding neighbors in places like that.' Meanwhile Joy Behar said the decision by president Donald Trump's attorney general could hurt the GOP. 'He’s very popular, this guy, there could be a backlash,' she said of Mangione. 'All I’m saying is, politically, it could be a backlash against Republicans to give him the death penalty.' Sunny Hostin, on her part, questioned the basis of AG Bondi's decision. 'It just seems like the attorney general is acting, really, against our institutional standards, which is what this administration is doing,' said Hostin, who is a former prosecutor. 'I was a little surprised this is where the Trump Justice Department started.'