Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to charges related to killing of UnitedHealthcare executive in federal case

Plea comes weeks before separate case is scheduled to start in New York, and could throw proceedings into disarray

Luigi Mangione attends a pre-trial hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. Picture: David Dee Delgado/Pool Photo via AP

Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty on Friday in a federal case in relation to the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson in 2024.

Mangione allegedly shot and killed Thompson outside a New York City hotel on 4 December 2024. In his federal case, he most recently faced stalking charges. In a separate state case, Manhattan prosecutors charged Mangione with murder and weapons counts.

He came into court on Friday morning in a beige prison jumpsuit with his wrists and ankles shackled, a change from recent appearances where he was in a jacket and shirt. He had been brought to the Manhattan courthouse from custody in Brooklyn. Relatives of Thompson were in court in a rare occurrence, in the front row and family members began crying as Mangione told the judge what he had done.

“I shot Mr Thompson and he died. I knew what I was doing was illegal,” Mangione said. In a federal case like this, the victim’s family has to agree to a plea deal by the defendant if such a deal is favored, avoiding a trial.

The judge said earlier that Mangione was in a fit state to plead, he was asked a series of questions.

Mangione’s case has drawn extensive global attention as Thompson’s death spurred intense discussion about the US’s heavily criticized for-profit healthcare system. The attention has also been fueled by Mangione’s rise to virtual folk-hero status among some of his supporters.

Magione’s decision to plead guilty in the federal trial came after days of intense speculation that his case would resolve prior to a trial. Mere hours after a final pretrial conference in his state case, federal prosecutors and his defense had submitted a joint letter requesting a proceeding.

The shock plea came weeks before his Manhattan murder case was scheduled to start in state court and could throw those proceedings into disarray, as New York double jeopardy law could bar his state-level prosecution due to this plea.

Under New York state law, “a person may not be twice prosecuted for the same offense” and “a person may not be separately prosecuted for two offenses based upon the same act or criminal transaction”. A state appeals court decision points out, however, that these statements precede the word “unless” as well as a list of exceptions.

Mangione was arrested at an Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald’s on 9 December 2024 after a dramatic manhunt to find Thompson’s killer. Mangione in April 2025 pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he stalked and murdered Thompson.

Not long after Mangione’s arrest, Pam Bondi, then the US attorney general, announced that she would instruct prosecutors to seek the death penalty. She said that Thompson’s killing was a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America”.

Bondi also said that her position was aligned with “Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again”.

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But Judge Margaret Garnett on 30 January threw out two of the four counts in Mangione’s federal indictment including the death penalty-eligible charge of murder through use of a firearm, meaning this punishment was off the table. Garnett said that US supreme court precedents made the murder charge “incompatible” with the two stalking charges.

“This case will proceed to trial on counts one and two, which charge the defendant with causing Brian Thompson’s death under two federal stalking laws,” Garnett said in her order. “The potential maximum punishment for each of those offenses is life in prison without parole.” 

“Consequently, the chief practical effect of the legal infirmities of counts three and four, and this court’s decision that they must be dismissed, is solely to foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury that will otherwise determine, at trial, whether to convict the defendant for causing Brian Thompson’s death,” Garnett had said.

Prior to Friday’s proceeding, Mangione appeared Tuesday in Manhattan state court for the final pretrial conference in that case