The man accused of gunning down a health insurance executive in a brazen hit in New York that sparked fierce debate about the industry pleaded not guilty Monday to state charges including “terrorist” murder.
Monday’s hearing came after Mangione, 26, appeared in a New York court last week to face federal charges also including murder following his dramatic extradition by plane and helicopter from Pennsylvania, where he was arrested at a McDonald’s restaurant. The suspect is charged in both state and federal court in the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson.
People demonstrating against the industry gathered outside court Monday brandishing banners reading “free Luigi” and “innocent until proven guilty.”
If convicted in the state case, Mangione could face life imprisonment with no parole. In the federal case, he could technically face the death penalty.
Mangioni’s attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo has previously sought clarity on how simultaneous federal and state charges would work, calling the situation “highly unusual.”
Agnifilo raised concerns on Monday that Mangione could not receive a fair trial, and questioned why New York mayor Eric Adams had been present when Mangione was brought off a police helicopter at a Manhattan helipad last week. Aginifilo told local media Monday that officials “are treating him like he is like some sort of political fodder.” She said the sight of Mangione flanked by rifle-wielding tactical officers during the final stage of his extradition that was widely broadcast was “utterly political.”
The way they so desperately want to make an example out of him is going to give Luigi’s lawyer plenty of ammo.
Making it a terrorism charge significantly raises the bar to get a guilty verdict even if Luigi admits to the killing.
Trying for the death penalty I think requires every member of the jury to agree on a guilty verdict instead of a majority (IANAL)
And every time they do this shit it just highlights the injustice between the classes because of course people are going to compare it to the treatment of mass shooters:
A dozen police officers to escort him vs 2 for a serial killer.
Terrorism charges and risk of the death penalty
Super special emergency line for CEOs because 911 isn’t good enough for them.Maybe a couple more assassinations of CEOs and the only country where this repeatedly happens will finally start looking into ways to prevent this.
Terrorist charges?
Rich people justice.
I’ve never seen the government work so fast as they are with this guy. There’s people in jail that have been waiting months for a trial.
This is a deposition.
Should have been running for president during his crimes.
Not really, for example a 2024 case of a Straw Purchaser for guns used in various crimes Dion Jamar Cooper was arrested April 18th and Plead Not Guilty on May 11th.
So, pretty normal timeframe compared to at least one other case. Whats a case with a longer gap between arrest and hearing?
Smells like double jeopardy.
Unfortunately double jeopardy doesn’t exist in cases of a person being tried by the state and by the federal government. It’s something they call dual sovereignty. Our corrupt court ruled it was still legal again in 2019 I believe.
That’s fucked.
terrorist murder
If anything, this further shows we are living in two tiered justice system
If anything, Luigi murdered a terrorist.
A terrorist is someone who enacts violence against civilians in order to create political change. Not saying Luigi deserves any of this, but if his goal was to make a point to the world about the mistreatment of patients at the hands of insurance companies in order to push change, then the terrorism charge is accurate.
What insurance companies do is far worse than terrorism. They harvest the sick, elderly, and injured for their money in order to sate the capitalist urge to increase revenue for the investors. But that isn’t illegal.
It’s a straight up cyberpunk dystopia. Corporations run the world, they provide all the means of being able to survive, and disagreement with it is a crime.
They don’t even care about the people inside the corporations themselves, because they’re replaceable. It’s all functioning to generate wealth for the owners of society.
Fuck, the reason I both loved and hated Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is because it was too real at the beginning.
Actually, every first degree murder in the state of New York is terrorist murder by definition, unless it falls under one of the other prerequisites for the charge such as being killed by law enforcement while in custody, etc.
As per Gemini AL,
Example: Actions that target civilians, spread fear, and aim to achieve political goals are more likely to be considered terrorism, regardless of the exact death toll.
This begs the question: Why are the rich fearful? If they are honest, they should have a clear conscience and nothing to fear.
At the end of the day what is considered “terrorism” is political. If we were to use the term in the definitions sense every government is terrorist. Many countries proud themselves on some point in history that would be considered terrorism, like the American Independence or French Revolution.
It is always terrorism if it is challenging the current power and if it wins it becomes freedome fighting instead. Looking at the way climate protests are handled in the UK or Germany it becomes increasingly absurd, as nonviolent acts of civil disobedience are now investigated and charged as “terrorism”.
Yeah, aren’t they just really good earners?
Literally standard procedure for a criminal trial. I absolutely hate it.
It’s predicated on “never admit guilt, so we can wheel and deal in backrooms to make a plea deal.” They say plea deals are to keep courts from being packed and backed up, but it’s more about punishing the poorest who have no money to fight when they’re innocent.
Almost everyone always starts with a plea of Not Guilty. No matter how fuckin guilty they are or not. You could be the guiltiest motherfucker on the planet, and you’ll still have your lawyer tell you to plea Not Guilty.
Luigi isn’t poor or without money, though.
Which, hopefully, he can use some of that for his attorney. That’s the problem with our dystopia. The poor are far too powerless to take matters into their own hands. They don’t have access to 3D printers, let alone ammunition and the academic rigour that wealth can provide to plot something like this. And I’m not talking the whole "getting away from it part. The hit was calculated.
That’s why the elite are pressing so hard against this. If more of their own (but lesser) become sympathetic to the larger population, then they are truly fucked.
Revolutions need resources. We’re in a society where the resources are so well controlled and industrialized that every little bit is tracked. It’s up to the people with any power to do something to do it.
That’s the message the elite doesnt want to spread. They don’t want people that have basic human empathy to turn against their handlers.
Lmao, I defended myself against a bully in school and the pigs didn’t even do any investigation and took the school admin’s word for it and arrested me for “Agravated Assault”
They then did a “diversion” that basically I have to promise not to commit a crime for 6 months (like bitch, do I look like a fucking criminal to you?) and then case would be dismissed, and crucially, it did not include an admission of guilt, so I took it. But if it had included an admission of guilt, I’d fucking fight that shit to the end. Pull the CCTV, motherfuckers, see if that’s enough evidence.
Also, I learned that (via internet searches) if you are under 18, you do not get a right jury trial, but it also simultaneously can potentially have the same impact as an adult conviction. That’s was the most bullshit thing I’ve learned.
Oh wanna know some more bullshit I learned? USCIS can see all juvenile records for the past 5 years, even arrests that didn’t result in conviction (or technically, for juveniles, it’s called being “adjundicated delinquent”), even if sealed, expunged, or even pardoned, which could come into play if you aren’t a citizen (which, thank god figuatively, that I had derived citizenship from my mother’s naturalization, imagine the shitshow on the other, even shittier timeline).
(Also, USCIS can see ALL adult records, even arrests that didn’t result in conviction, doesn’t matter if sealed, expunged, or pardoned. They see it all. Fucking bullshit.)
I did not really had ACAB sentinments before, but now I’ve been radicalized by the police and I’ll fucking say ACAB, and now I’m very sympathetic towards anarchist movements.
I think the failure of the phrase ACAB is that it pins the problems of the system just on cops. Corrupt lawmakers, judges, district attorneys, prosecutors, and defenders all play into this as well. Lawmakers made the laws defer to cops over citizens, judges treat a cops word as more truthful than a citizens, same with district attorneys and prosecuting attorneys. They’re all scratching each others back in a sick system where nearly all of them are essentially above the law. Cops are enabled by all the other groups.
The point in this one is to convince a jury that he’s not guilty of the exact charges. His lawyers will surely go the “not terrorism” route, but unfortunately he has other charges. I think the legal term is “stacking”?
Yep, they’re hitting him with media-generating charges like first degree murder and terrorism, but probably can only make the second degree murder actually stick. That way they can drop the worst charges and still hit him with second degree.
Eh, my lawyer recommended that I plead nolo contendere, but each case is different.
Great, his innocent. Now let’s give him back his gun and let him go. Somewhere near Elon Musk, maybe?
Mad that the grand jury didn’t refuse to indict.
Hope the jury nullifies.
If he is found guilty, maybe it’ll be time for unrest.
A grand jury is weird.
Selected at random like regular jurors, they are on duty for an extended period, they meet in secret and protected. They are only allowed to examine prosecutorial evidence, and only allowed to say if the collected evidence is enough to stand trial.
It’s not a great system mostly because some of the stuff they have no choice but to agree to indict with, or they get held in contempt themselves.
That doesn’t really matter.
A grand jury decides if theres enough evidence for an indictment, not determine guilt. Whether the evidence is enough for conviction, is not up to them. Only half is required to indict. A non-indictment is not an acquital.
Murder has no statute of limitations.
They’ll just wait for a different grand jury and get to try to get an indictment again, this time, probably with less media coverage and less scrutiny.
The petit jury, or trial jury, decides if evidence is legit. This is where it really matters.
You can keep convening grand juries against someone for the same event until they agree to indict? That seems dubious. And is especially damning in the context of police that don’t get indicted and never go to trial.
You can keep convening grand juries against someone for the same event until they agree to indict?
Think about it this way. The grand jury is basically taking on the role of a prosecutor for the sole decision of whether or not to indict, after that, the actual prosecutor takes over.
If you are a civillian, and the prosecutor that has jurisdiction refuses to prosecute, say, the murder of your child, you can then wait for the prosecutor to lose office (either by losing an election, or wait for someone else to get appointed, depending on how its selected in your area), then ask the new prosecutor to file the charges, and since murder has no statute of limitations, you can keep trying this until a prosecutor decides to indict.
This is essentially what a grand jury is. They are temporary taking the role of the prosecutor, for one act, and one act only, deciding whether or not to indict.
Right, but that doesn’t answer if they convene a grand jury for a specific alleged crime, and the grand jury says “no”, can they try again with a new jury? For the same alleged crime? That seems like an obvious flaw in that they can just keep trying until they get an indictment and can proceed. There’d be no point in the grand jury step because it eventually returns an indictment.
Edit: Internet is telling me
Even if a grand jury does not indict an individual, the prosecutor can re-bring the same defendant before the grand jury on the same charges multiple times, although prosecutors will usually wait until a new grand jury is convened for especially high-profile cases. This is allowed because issues of double jeopardy do not attach until a person has been formally charged.
Which seems insane.
https://www.arnoldsmithlaw.com/who-decides-whether-or-not-i-will-be-charged-with-a-crime.html
Our legal system seems really bad, folks
I don’t think its insane.
If half of a grand jury is enough to acquit, then you are basically doing a coin toss to see if someone like Dylan Roof gets to walk free.
Trials require uanimous jury verdict to make sure the verdict is as correct as they can be
it seems weird that the state can keep trying until they get the answer they want. Why is that protection only available later?
It wouldn’t be a coin toss - the odds are heavily slanted in favor of the prosecutor. The defense has no role.
Also does this mean that those times cops didn’t get indicted, the state could have tried again?
It’s already time for unrest.
Looks like it’s been time for unrest for over fifty years now, since this kicked off in the early 70’s.
It shouldn’t have taken a murder to wake people up.
Yeah it’s past time, the working class has basically lost the class war and we’re just running on fumes now. At the same time, the owner class is working double time to implement AI so they can employ even fewer of us.
Anyone not in a corporate atmosphere is probably not as privvy to this, but it’s insane the effort going into replacing human work with AI. Of course it’s all under the guise of ‘improving working conditions’ or ‘keeping current employee levels’ but in the end you know they’re salivating at the thought of firing a bunch of people.
And we can’t fight progress but we sure as hell should be fighting for some kind of UBI and share of the work that gets done by AI.
no! its time to vote!
hahahahaha. because, clearly, that has been working /sarcasmI’m voting as hard as I can! I can’t vote any harder!
Yeah, he’s the start of it
No, but he’s an escalation, and now’s not the time to back down.
This is US local news. Most countries in the world don’t have the issues of inequality caused by highly privatised health care like in the US.
The problem is it spreads. It’s already taking over some provinces in Canada.
Nothing forbids sharing US news in this community. Anything interesting on the globe goes afaik :)
Also while many countries don’t have inequality issues in the “highly privatised health care” industry, I genuinely can’t name a single country without inequality issues and Luigi’s story may be inspirational to some of these ppl facing inequalities so imo it’s good to see it shared here!
