After news broke in early April 2025 that the U.S. Department of Justice would direct prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024, a claim spread online comparing Mangione's possible fate to the outcome of another case: that of Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 people and injured 22 more in a shooting targeting Hispanic immigrants at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in 2019.
Social media users specifically spread an image showing two news headlines side by side. One, purportedly from MSNBC News, was, "DOJ directs prosecutors to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione." The second headline was allegedly from CNN, and it read, "Gunman who killed 23 in racist attack at Texas Walmart offered plea deal to avoid death penalty."
Screenshots of the pair of headlines spread on platforms like Instagram, Reddit and Bluesky. Some social media users suggested the comparison was reason to call for criminal justice reform or abolishing the current system altogether.
The headlines in the image were authentic headlines from MSNBC and CNN. Furthermore, the information in the two headlines was accurate: Federal prosecutors were, at the time of this writing, seeking the death penalty for 26-year-old Mangione, whereas prosecutors did not and will not seek the death penalty for Crusius, also 26. Thus, we rate this claim true.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on April 1 that she had directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Mangione because "the murder was an act of political violence" and "may have posed grave risk of death to additional persons" because the shooting took place in public.
The
Snopes also fact-checked a related claim comparing Mangione's potential death sentence to the sentences handed down to convicted school shooters.
The two cases
MSNBC's story, dated April 1, 2025, is here. As the screenshot that circulated on social media showed, the headline is "DOJ directs prosecutors to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione." This information in the headline was true; Bondi released a statement that same day via the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs. The relevant portion of the statement, which can be read online here, is below (emphasis ours):
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. After careful consideration, 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.
CNN's story, dated March 25, 2025, was a syndicated piece originally from The Associated Press, and versions of it appeared in different publications under different headlines. Still, the headline that appeared on CNN's page did, in fact, read, "Gunman who killed 23 in racist attack at Texas Walmart offered plea deal to avoid death penalty."
The information in the CNN headline was also true. El Paso County District Attorney James Montoya, a prosecutor
The first thing I wanted to do was to confirm that our office has, in fact, extended an offer to the defendant in this case to plead guilty to capital murder and a sentence to life without parole and a complete waiver of all of his appellate rights in exchange for us no longer pursuing — dropping — the death penalty in this case.
Montoya told reporters that while he personally believes Crusius should receive the death penalty, seeking that sentence would lengthen the process and go against the wishes of most of the victims' families and survivors. "I could not in good conscience continue to seek the death penalty against the wishes of so many other people," he said (see 6:40). He also acknowledged that some families still wanted him to seek the death penalty. (One family member who believed the sentence should be left to a jury wrote an
The full news conference video is
Federal prosecutors also chose not to seek the death penalty for Crusius; they announced this decision on Jan. 17, 2023, in a one-sentence
The Justice Department later released a statement announcing that the judge in the federal case sentenced Crusius to 90 consecutive life sentences for the shooting under hate crime and firearm laws.
The administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden, who was in office during the federal trial, did not appear to provide any explanation for the decision not to pursue the death penalty in the Crusius case to reporters at the time. Biden has, in the past, opposed the death penalty.