Luigi Mangione will not face the death penalty if convicted of killing UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, a federal court has ruled.

US District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed the federal firearms charges against the 27-year-old that carried the possibility of the death penalty.

But she left in place stalking charges against him that can bring a maximum punishment of life in prison.

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Jury selection in the federal trial is scheduled to begin on 8 September with opening statements due to start on 13 October.

But state prosecutors are seeking to try Mangione as soon as July.

In her ruling, Judge Garnett, a Biden appointee, said two of the four federal charges did not “meet the federal statutory definition of a ‘crime of violence’ as matter of law”.

She noted that her decision was “solely to foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury”.

Garnett’s ruling was a setback for the justice department, which had called Thompson’s murder a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination”.

The judge has given the government 30 days to challenge her decision ruling out the death penalty in the Mangione case.

In a win for prosecutors, Garnett said they could present evidence to the jury from Mangione’s backpack that he had at the time of his arrest at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Among the items in the bag were a gun, fake IDs and a notebook with writings that allegedly detailed Mangione’s grievances against the US healthcare system.

Defence attorneys had sought to dismiss that evidence from trial, arguing that authorities obtained it illegally without a warrant.