Death penalty off the table for alleged Hortman killer
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Federal prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty for the man accused of killing former DFL Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.
Investigators say that Vance Boelter also shot and wounded DFL State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette and tried to shoot their daughter Hope during an early morning rampage on June 14, 2025 in which he disguised himself as a police officer.
A federal grand jury returned a six count indictment in July that charges Boelter, 58, with stalking, murder with a firearm, and two other gun crimes. He also faces state charges of first-degree premeditated murder that carry an automatic sentence of life without parole.
Minnesota eliminated capital punishment in 1911, but the same grand jury gave federal prosecutors the go-ahead to determine if the death penalty is appropriate for the murder charges.
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DOJ officials say now that they will not pursue a death sentence for Boelter.
“Bringing justice to the families and loved ones of victims of violence is the number one priority of the Department of Justice,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement. “Prosecutors worked hard on this case to make sure he was held accountable to the fullest extent possible.”
The statement doesn’t detail the legal reasoning behind the decision, but attorney Robin Maher, who leads the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said in an interview with MPR News that the murder charges alone are not death-eligible unless prosecutors can prove another underlying crime of violence.
Maher said that prosecutors tried to argue that stalking is a valid predicate offense but ran into roadblocks.
“Stalking has been held not to qualify as a crime of violence,” Maher said. “This all may seem like semantics, but what we’re doing is reflecting the will of Congress and many many decades of jurisprudence.”
Maher also noted that getting a jury to approve a death sentence could be challenging in Minnesota, where no state court has litigated a capital case in more than a century and no federal prosecutor has sought the death penalty in the modern era.
She also said that the Justice Department’s failed bid to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who’s charged in the 2024 killing of Twin Cities-based UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was a likely factor in DOJ’s decision in the Boelter case.
A grand jury indicted Mangione, on the same stalking and murder charges that Boelter would later face for allegedly shooting Thompson outside of a Manhattan hotel in December 2024. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that DOJ would seek the death penalty for Mangione. But in January – a federal judge in New York dismissed two of the counts, including the murder charge that the feds had argued was a capital offense.
Maher said that the Justice Department in the second Trump Administration is overreaching in its efforts to pursue capital cases.
“It’s charging cases that would not qualify for a federal death sentence under the law,” Maher said. “They’re pushing to see how far they can get. In Mr. Mangione’s case and now Mr. Boelter’s case, they’ve had to take a step back.”
