Summary
Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is set to appear in a New York courtroom Friday for a hearing on evidence exchange and a potential trial date.
He faces state murder charges with a terrorism enhancement, carrying a life sentence without parole.
Mangione also faces federal charges, including one with a potential death penalty, and separate charges in Pennsylvania. His defense claims political bias in the case.
In a statement, Mangione thanked supporters for their letters from across the country and the world.
For once, I don’t think that particular charge is entirely inconsistent with the dictionary definition.
He’s accused of killing a member of the public in the hope of frightening everyone else in that person’s position into taking some kind of action.
I think the law says something about killing for a “political purpose”, with the goal of changing some kind of public policy or behaviour. That’s not an unreasonable interpretation of what happened, I think.
Unfortunately that means they get to use the laws which were written to deal with mass murder and bombing public spaces, which I don’t think is particularly appropriate but doesn’t seem out of line with the law
If he was a terrorist, then law enforcement should’ve had everyone evacuate the area at the time of incident. That did not happen, so sounds like they’re just trying to pile on whatever BS they can
How would you even go about proving that without a confession, let alone proving he was the one that actually did it. If they can point to one thing this CEO or Company did that would get someone potentially angry enough toward that one person or company to do harm then I’m not sure how you expand that to everyone else.
It’s arguable, sure, but unnecessary. They have to prove beyond a doubt that his intentions were to threaten the government into making political changes. They could have just charged him with murder where they’d only need to prove he wanted to kill the guy. Both crimes would lead to life in prison, so why go for the one more difficult to prove? Ironically, I think it’s because the government wants to threaten the public.
Consideration of this incident as terrorism is a great indicator of the position of private businesses within US policy. Corporations are, for all intents and purposes, a core contingent of the US government and its policy, hence why the corporate media+capital class+politicians are treating it as such.