By Kara Scannell

(CNN) — Lawyers for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing United Healthcare’s chief executive officer, are asking a federal judge to block the Justice Department from seeking the death penalty, calling the decision a “political stunt.”

Earlier this month Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the Justice Department would pursue the death penalty in Mangione’s case, fulfilling President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to resume federal executions.

Mangione’s attorneys are seeking court intervention, arguing that the Justice Department should be prevented from seeking the death penalty because it didn’t follow certain protocols and violated Mangione’s due process.

Bondi’s public statements, they argue, also tainted the grand jury pool.

“The stakes could not be higher. The United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt,” his lawyers wrote to the judge. “Mr. Mangione’s counsel asked for three months to prepare a fulsome mitigation submission to the Department of Justice’s Capital Committee and was ignored.”

Bondi has said she will direct the interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Matthew Podolsky, to seek the death penalty in the case if Mangione is convicted on capital murder charges. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on the case on Friday.

Mangione, 26, is facing state and federal murder charges for allegedly gunning down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside of a hotel in midtown Manhattan last year.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the state charges. He was charged in a federal criminal complaint but has not yet been indicted on federal charges. One of the federal charges, murder through the use of a firearm, carries a maximum sentence of death, if convicted.

Since Bondi’s announcement, donations to Mangione’s legal defense fund have poured in. Supporters have contributed over $850,000 in total, with many recent donations citing the Justice Department’s decision to seek the death penalty.

Mangione’s lawyers said they argued against the death penalty in a “hastily assembled” meeting with federal prosecutors in New York during the final days of the Biden administration and were later informed that the Capital Case committee had not reached a decision. His lawyers said they then sought three months to make a fuller submission with mitigating factors but were informed a decision would be made before then.

“Ultimately, any mitigation would have fallen on deaf ears in any event, as the Attorney General was plainly concerned only with ‘the President’s directive’ and with the ‘Make America Safe’ policies of the administration instead of the facts of this case,” his attorneys wrote in the filing.

The-CNN-Wire
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