U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday she is directing prosecutors to pursue the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the young man suspected of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday said she had ordered federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, who is charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December.

“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,” Bondi said in a statement issued by the Department of Justice.

US prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting dead UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Tuesday that she had directed federal prosecutors to seek the penalty for the "premeditated, cold-blooded assassination".

A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets.

Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11.

Four Canadians were executed in China on drug-related charges earlier this year, Canadian authorities have confirmed.

All of them were dual citizens and their identities have been withheld, Canada's foreign minister Mélanie Joly said.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Canada reportedly urged Ottawa to "stop making irresponsible remarks", as pundits feared a further downturn in relations between the countries after years of strain.

Louisiana used nitrogen gas to put a man to death Tuesday evening for a killing decades ago, marking the first time the state has used the method as it resumed executions after a 15-year hiatus.

Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46, was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, authorities said, adding the nitrogen gas had flowed for 19 minutes during what one official characterized as a “flawless” execution.

A convicted double murderer has been executed by firing squad – the first such execution in the United States since 2010, according to the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

The execution of Brad Sigmon, 67, by the South Carolina Department of Corrections on Friday is only the fourth firing squad execution in the US since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Supreme Court on Monday overturned the conviction and death sentence of Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip, citing prosecutorial misconduct that likely tainted his 2004 trial.

The ruling in Glossip v. Oklahoma overturns the conviction of a defendant who has spent more than two decades on death row and sends the case back for a new trial.