By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press
U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday they will not seek the death penalty as part of a plea agreement with the man charged in the political assassinations of the top Democrat in the Minnesota House along with her husband, as well as the attempted murders of a state senator and his wife.
The defendant, Vance Boelter, was scheduled for a change-of-plea hearing Thursday morning in federal court in Minneapolis.
“The Attorney General has authorized and directed the government not to seek the death penalty against Defendant Vance Luther Boelter in accordance with the terms delineated in a proposed plea agreement,” assistant U.S. attorneys Bradley M. Endicott and Matthew D. Forbes wrote in a letter to the court Wednesday.
The Justice Department had said earlier in the week that it decided not to pursue the death penalty. While the Trump administration has pushed for greater use of capital punishment, there were questions about whether Boelter’s case would qualify for it.
Boelter’s attorneys did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The court filing did not detail the terms of the plea agreement.
Former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, were shot by a man who came to their doors in the early hours of June 14, 2025, disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car. The Hortmans’ golden retriever was so gravely injured that he had to be euthanized.
Boelter, 58, was captured near his home in rural Green Isle late the next day after what prosecutors have called the largest search for a suspect in Minnesota history. He faces federal and state murder, attempted murder and other charges. His state case has been on hold pending the resolution of his federal charges.
Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911 and has never had a federal death penalty case.
Daniel Borgertpoepping, a spokesperson for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, said the federal plea deal would not affect Boelter’s state charges.
Under federal law, to obtain the death penalty against Boelter, prosecutors would have to show he committed the killings during another “crime of violence.” Boelter’s underlying charge was that he stalked the victims.
A federal judge in New York earlier this year barred prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, ruling that stalking doesn’t count as a violent crime.
Prosecutors have called the attacks on the Minnesota politicians political. When they announced the federal indictment in July, they released a rambling handwritten letter they say Boelter wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel in which he confessed to the shootings. However, the letter didn’t make clear why he targeted the Hortmans or the Hoffmans.
In some messages to media, Boelter referenced a vague and cryptic “investigation” he had been carrying out, sometimes suggesting it was about the COVID-19 vaccine.
Friends described Boelter as an evangelical Christian and occasional preacher and missionary, who held politically conservative views and had been struggling to find work.
When Minnesota’s legislative session convened in February, Hoffman got a warm welcome as he walked up the stairs into the Senate chamber. He said in a lawsuit filed against Boelter in April that his left arm and hand likely would never fully recover, and that he also had permanent injuries to his digestive and urinary systems.
Yvette Hoffman was left with permanent physical weakness, the lawsuit said, while their adult daughter, Hope Hoffman, who was there and called 911 but was not shot, suffered severe psychological trauma.
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Johnson reported from Seattle. Former AP reporter Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed