A federal judge on Friday said jury selection will begin in early September for the murder trial of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down a health insurance executive outside a hotel in Manhattan.

Mangione, 27, is accused of fatally shooting Brian Thompson, who was CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s health insurance unit, on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan in December 2024. Public officials condemned the assassination, but Mangione became something of a folk hero to some critics of steep U.S. healthcare costs and insurer practices.

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett said at a hearing in Manhattan that she would tentatively set a date for jury selection in the first week of September, with the start of the evidence phase of trial depending on whether she allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

Mangione, dressed in prison garb for Friday’s hearing in a courtroom packed with spectators, had pleaded not guilty to federal murder, stalking and weapons charges and has been behind bars while awaiting trial.

Mangione’s lawyers argued at the hearing that a charge of murder with a firearm – the only one that carries the possibility of the death penalty – should be dismissed because prosecutors did not meet the legal requirements for such a charge.

Garnett is separately weighing Mangione’s bid to throw out the indictment altogether and bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty because they allegedly violated his constitutional rights. She said she would rule in a written order at a later date.

New York’s death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 2004, but the ban applies in state, not federal cases. Mangione also faces state-level criminal charges, including murder, and could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

A trial date has not been set in the state case.

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(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Rod Nickel and Bill Berkrot)