The 26-year-old Ivy League grad charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk this month has been indicted by a grand jury in the case, the district attorney’s office announced Tuesday. Luigi Mangione is accused of first-degree murder, in furtherance of terrorism...
Previously the reporting on this did not have a political angle and so it was removed from Politics and correctly directed to News.
The charges related to terrorism now give this a political angle.
"Luigi Mangione is accused of first-degree murder, in furtherance of terrorism; second-degree murder, one count of which is charged as killing as an act of terrorism; criminal possession of a weapon and other crimes."
"The act must be committed with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion."
They’re clearly trying to send a message to scare his supporters
Yes, they are. By charging him as a terrorist, they are saying that anyone who supports him is supporting terrorism. I'm sure that someone somewhere is making very long lists of names of social media posters and people who donated to his legal defense.
Nah. I have an out. Insurance CEOs simply aren't human. The charge should be animal cruelty at the worst. Luigi should get the same criminal penalty as someone would get for stepping on a cockroach. Murder requires the thing you're destroying to actually be a human being.
Come the fuck on, Feds New York. Absolutely fucking not. This sparked joy, not terror, in the populace. This was, to be quite frank, the exact opposite of terrorism.
This is like saying a wife killing their abusive husband is an act of terror. Clearly she's saying she's not taking the abuse anymore and any man or woman that treats her so poorly would meet a similar end. The perp that killed UnitedHealthcare's CEO and those cheering him on are saying the same
thing -- enough abuse. We're all terrorists because we want CEOs that do real harm to their customers to be held accountable? The current system is completely ill-equipped to even do so much as shame these abusers (i.e. libel and slander laws).
"The act must be committed with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion."
These CEOs are quite literally trying to kill us for profit. This is class warfare, and they are the aggressor. They are not civilians, and the terror is not directed at the population or the government.
In fairness, I think you could argue the second half. But I would have to read the manifesto to see if he actualy intended that, or if it is just the rest of us who wish he had..
Are insurance CEOs really human? Is it even possible to commit murder against one? I think it would be more like killing a flesh-eating parasite. I'm thinking the charge should be animal cruelty at the worst. What kind of criminal penalty would I get if I threw an ant farm in a lake? That's the kind of punishment Luigi should get.
Jury nullification does not require "grounds". Jury nullification is a result of the jury's verdict being final regardless of the details of the trial. It's also an effect of the fact that you cannot be tried twice for the same crime. The jury is not required to form a verdict strictly on the basis of the trial. The may find the defendant not guilty regardless of actual guilt.
They aren't dropping the second degree murder charge, so they don't necessarily have to meet the higher bar that this sets.
That said, while they probably want to be able to paint him as a terrorist, that necessarily involves a more detailed look at what he was trying to accomplish, and that might just backfire on the prosecution. It only takes one sympathetic juror to block a guilty verdict.
The second part of the statue, to cause government action, does seem kind of appropriate. But I highly doubt he thought he could pull that off and it's going to take a lot more 2nd player characters to get there.
"The act must be committed with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion."
I have no issue with the state correctly identifying this act as terrorism. I take great issue with the fact that this act is being defined as terrorism, while using a definition that clearly defines many things that get a pass as terrorism. Remember last Trump presidency, when his white house published an old-school violent videogames scare video to garner support for his policies while distracting from discussion on gun laws? An act committed with the intent to coerce a civilian population is terrorism.
And let's be real, I picked a low-stakes, innoculous example just to make a point: the state does a LOT to terrorize it's citizens. But when they do it, it's "law and order." When Luigi fights back in self defense? "Terrorism".
New Yorkers and Pennsylvania residents need to show up to their jury duty summons and get your ass on a trial... You never know whose trial you'll end up on. Don't say nullification during the interview!
The act must be committed with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion
No, see, that's clearly false. The civilian population did not get intimidated or coerced by fuck and all, and the government wasn't threatened.
The government is run by corporatism, so maybe? But as for the public, this is most solidarity we've seen from US citizens in a while. We weren't the target, nor did we feel like we were. We were Spartacus.
For a moment, I thought "hmm. What if we all said 'No, I shot Brian Thompson'" sort of like what happened in Spartacus, but then I remembered that all 6000 slaves or whatnot were executed
A lot of very incontrovertible terrorism was in the form of a single very public murder. The difference was that it was against vulnerable groups and the murderers were rarely charged.
"The act must be committed with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion."
So it's fine if you use large sums of money but someone goes with the more democratic route of using a gun and suddenly it's not cool
That's the funny thing, he wasn't poor at all. His family is fabulously wealthy. We don't know how much access to that money he had, but he was able to get two degrees from a very expensive school then move to Honolulu and join an intentional community while not having a job. Then disappear for months while not having a job.
I think he had no intention of getting away with it. The ideal way to do this would be acting like he planned nothing, don't disappear, then go visit an old friend somewhere who would give an alibi. Instead he's hanging out in bumfuck Pennsylvania with the murder weapon and fake ID.
New York Penal Law § 490.25, the crime of terrorism, is one of the most serious criminal offenses in New York State. The statute defines the crime of terrorism as any act that is committed with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion and that results in one or more of the following: (a) the commission of a specified offense, (b) the causing of a specified injury or death, (c) the causing of mass destruction or widespread contamination, or (d) the disruption of essential infrastructure.
Note the OR between coerceing the public and coerceing government. He coerced the public by murdering on the street. Doesn't have anything to do with the government.
Eh. I really don't consider insurance CEOs to be human. If you so thoroughly abandon your own humanity, why should we even legally consider you a human being anymore? As such, I would argue that it's no more possible to murder an insurance CEO than it's possible to murder a cardboard box. Hell, at least a cardboard box does some minimal good for the world. Frankly, Thompson's doing more good for the world as worm food than he ever did as a CEO. I consider the worms feeding on Thompson to be more human than Thompson himself. Does Thompson technically have a family? Sure, but so do the worms.