WASHINGTON—Luigi Mangione, the Ivy League graduate charged with fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk in December, has pleaded not guilty in connection with the killing. Like all defendants, Mangione enters the courtroom with the presumption of innocence. But if a jury finds him guilty of the capital murder of which he is accused, Mangione could be sentenced to the death penalty.
Ah, but there is trouble in paradise for death penalty opponents whose activism jams or slows down the wheels of justice. President Donald Trump is stone-cold serious about restoring the death penalty—or what’s left of it after four years with Joe Biden in the Oval Office.
As Trump said during a speech at the Department of Justice on Friday, he wants to add the murder of a police officer to the roster of capital offenses and fast-track trials of…
