Moments after Luigi Mangione was handcuffed at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.
The discovery, recounted in court Monday as Mangione fights to keep evidence out of his New York murder case, convinced police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that he was the man wanted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan five days earlier.
Bullets, a gun, $20,000 cash, the same outfit, the files on his computer where he designed and printed the gun mod used to shoot brian thompson, a history of book reviews where he says protests are not enough including one review of the book Deny Delay Defend which mirrors the words carved on the bullet casings at the murder scene of Brian Thompson, and the fact that he was travelling discreetly by bus across multiple states despite having a cushy six figure tech job and being the direct heir to the Mangione small fortune.
We all know he did it.
But here’s what doesn’t make sense to me. The guy is fucking smart, smart enough that he can literally shoot someone in broad daylight and escape the city. And then he turns up in a fucking McDonald’s with a backpack full of evidence. Those two things do not jive together. If he was that smart, the gun (or more specifically, all the parts that make up the gun disassembled) and everything else he had with him, including clothing would be in random trash cans and dumpsters all over the state by the time they caught him. Or burned. You aren’t smart enough to evade the entire American law enforcement apparatus for over a day, while also being dumb enough to walk around in public with a slam dunk conviction in your bag. Unless you want to be caught.
Point is, the whole thing stinks a bit to me.
Everyone has to eat, travel can be very exhausting.
I wouldn’t really call him smart.
If he didn’t do it, he needs to be set free.
If he did do it, he needs to be set free and a statue of him should be placed on the sidewalk where it happened to commemorate the event.
Cool! So where you do suppose we draw the line where people are allowed to straight up murder people on the street in cold blood because we don’t like them or what they do?
Because a WHOLE new set of laws need to be in place or this shit turns into the purge.
Why was the ceo allowed to have people murdered in cold blood by not providing treatment?
Denying treatment isn’t murder. Has no one explained to you what murder means?
It’s not that he just denied treatment. He ordered his company to deny treatment FOR COVERED ITEMS according to the insurance plan. This caused people to not get life saving care, die, and no longer be a “burden” on their bottom line. That IS murder. Premeditated.
That’s like seeing someone hanging from a ledge of a cliff because they fell and, instead of helping, they stomped on their fingers so they plunged to their death at the bottom.
The CEO was responsible for more death than his alleged killer by a several tens of thousands fold ratio.
And sadly, despite how horrific it is- at the end of the day, it is legal. He didn’t hunt these people down and end them. He denied them coverage.
This needs to change, but vigilantism clearly isn’t going to do it, and this is evident in the fact that it’s still happening. In fact, I believe it’s even worse now.
But- let’s say we bring the anger to the streets anyway, and full on gun down every CEO that we don’t like. What is stopping us from stopping at CEOs? Why not end regional managers we disagree with? Local managers? What about shift leaders?
Hell… Why even stop at our own places of work? Neighbors? Bad service providers? Anyone is a mark!
Where do we draw the line where murder isn’t okay just because we don’t like what someone does?
There is a reason we have laws in place to stop slippery slopes like this from happening. And we are better than these assholes. They got to do what they do using our system of law- so we will need to use that system of law to stop them.
Murder isn’t the way this is done. This is just how you escalate them putting the military in every city.
Look up depraved heart murder.
It’s a real legal tool used by prosecutors all over the country. The idea is that if someone actively chooses to take actions so incredibly dangerous in pursuit of their own interests that it is likely to cause people to die, that indifference to human life can be treated as malice aforethought (intent to kill) and they can be charged with 2nd degree murder for any deaths resulting from thise actions. The classic example would be knowingly selling tainted food or medicine for profit.
And it’s not just a US law. China literally executed executives for signing off on the sale of tainted baby formula.
Brian Thompson intentionally ordered the increased rejection of pre-authorizations for covered procedures and medications in order to drive up profit, resulting in a great deal of injury and death.
Is random people shooting execs in the street my preferred choice for how society handles these issues? No. But when official justice is denied, the inevitable result is people deciding to act on it themselves.
Johnson is dead because he was shot, yes. But more than that, he’s dead because the justice system refuses to hold people like him accountable for their illegal actions.
You really need to know how it works before you argue it. I get that one of you looked this up one day- and the rest of lemmy all piled on thinking that it’s a one-and-done legal defense after only just reading about it, but…
Proof of INTENT TO KILL means he’d have to know without question that they would have died, and that they had NO OTHER MEANS to acquire the procedure. This is nearly impossible to prove and the entire defense could rest on this notion alone.
For the record, I’m not agreeing with this shit-
I’m simply pointing out why it’s not so fucking simple as it seems. Everyone here seems to think the easiest solution is the best solution without ever questioning why the easiest solution seems so easy, yet no one has tried it.
Hope this helps:
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1337&context=dlj
Fiiiine manslaughter
Ew cunt your breath STINKS of boot leather, go brush your teeth and grow up.
lol….
His rights were violated when he was arrested. Full stop. A string of coincidences and atypical behavior does not a murderer make
I’m so torn by this one… assuming he did it, if it wasn’t about killing the very assuming asshole that got shot, he should not get free because of a technicality. I mean if it was another rando that committed a crime against a lambda not one would cheer about a criminal escaping justice due to a technicality. Or so I hope. But since the guy who was shot down was feasting on misery it’s a very tempting thing to wish for. Personally I would rather that we got the jury thingy where they all agree that no crime was committed instead or something along those lines I don’t remember the specifics about nullification.
That “technicality” is a critical part of our criminal justice system. I’d much rather a criminal be set free than set the precedent that due process is optional
Allowing exceptions here would open the door to all sorts of corruption. What would then stop the president from treating all his political opponents the same way? Have them all raided without cause and “find” all sorts of evidence
By the way, the jury thing is jury nullification. The basic concept is that if a juror feels a law is unjust (or any other reason), they can vote not to convict even if the burden of proof was met for a conviction. The courts can’t tell the jury their verdict is incorrect. The only recourse is an appeal (which can’t happen in an acquittal due to double jeopardy)
Jury nullification was used quite a bit in the North before the Civil War. Many Northern juries chose to acquit violations of the Fugitive Slave Act because they felt the law was unjust
Let’s say that the most generous past examples are followed and the evidence found on his person and statements he made following his arrests are off the table as evidence. There is still his history, lack of alibi, clothing, and the gun mod he printed. He’s still guilty.
Exactly. In the past few decades there have been many examples of falsely accused prisoners being exonerated by new evidence or corrupt convictions. Not to mention those that were executed before they could be found innocent.
That’s why it’s crucial that we hold our justice system to the highest standard. Not only because we want to find the perpetrator, but to ensure that we’re not convicting an innocent person. If the price of that is a few criminals get to escape justice, so be it.
I think the “risks” of letting a potential killer go free are reduced if the chances of any sort of repeat crime are distant.
I remember a sitcom spy-hero type show had a dilemma like this. A bad guy offers the good guys a large sum of money they can use to help unfortunate people he victimized, in exchange for them leaving him alone. He’s retired, has no plans, or even means, to continue any horrible acts, so it’s entirely down to whether they seek retribution for the bad stuff he’s done rather than use the opportunity to help and protect people.
I feel like the risks of Mangione killing again after being literally worshipped for killing the first replaceable suit are quite high. His innocent plea is telling that he is not at all repentant.
Personally, I’d say there’s another layer to it. You touched on it earlier, but consider also the risk this man poses to your average member of society. To do that, assuming he did it, you need to consider his motives—which is protest, at the core of it. There’s who the victim was, absolutely, but there’s also his motive. Based on the context we have, I don’t see him as a threat.
Jury nullification isn’t that they agreed crime wasn’t committed, but rather that they refuse to agree on a guilty verdict because they don’t agree with the law. It’s sort of a natural loophole in jury responsibility and enforcement.
See that’s kind of the trap you fall into with it. People treat jury nullification as a third option, but at the end of the day they give the verdict “not guilty” in those exact words despite how they feel about him doing the crime. If they announce “guilty but we don’t mind it” then the verdict is going to be guilty and the judge will be in charge of sentencing.
As long as you’re making things up, why not just say he confessed? Much stronger argument
Also WTF does his job have to do with taking the bus? I work in tech and take the bus too. I’d take trains, but American trains are lacking. Better arrest me too since riding the bus is proof of murder now
Which part are you accusing of being made up? All of it? Everything here is fake? There were no words carved into the bullet casings, he isn’t the son of the head of Mangione Enterprises, and 3D printers don’t even exist?
“Bitch I might!”
–American Law Enforcement
Careful with that nuance around here. It’s been know to hurt people.
I am going to be intentionally clumsy in this China shop.
I don’t know shit. I’m just a guy on the internet, and this is exactly why there is a justice system and not mob rule. It could be likely, it could be circumstancial. Let it play out, facts on the table and let his peers judge him for the crime he is alleged to have committed.
Pointing a finger from random anecdotes you’ve heard/seen or hearsay, or even potentially malicious prosecutors looking for a scapegoat and not actual answers. This could as likely be an inside job/false flag to stir the pot as it being a lone wolf with an agenda.
Show me the receipts, then we can talk about it.