Luigi Mangione was in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday. We hadn’t seen Luigi since his last court appearance in February, when he wore a very flattering green sweater. Unfortunately for this week’s appearance, Luigi was forced to wear some ugly beige prison gear which did nothing for his Mediterranean coloring. Last year, Luigi was arrested and charged with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York. Ever since his arrest, the authorities have acted like they caught Hannibal Lector, I swear to god. They marched him around in shackles and they even charged him with terrorism. Well, Luigi was in court yesterday because the terrorism charges were dismissed. As they should be.
New York State terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione, the defendant in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive last year, were dismissed on Tuesday, including a first-degree murder count that could have landed him in prison for the rest of his life.
The judge overseeing the case, Gregory Carro, said he had found the evidence behind the charges “legally insufficient.” Mr. Mangione, 27, also faces federal charges, and is still charged in New York with second-degree murder, for which he faces a sentence of 25 years to life, among nine other counts. Those cases will proceed, though no trial dates have been set.
In charging Mr. Mangione with terrorism, the Manhattan district attorney’s office seemed to acknowledge the seismic effect of a shooting that sent shock waves through American society and set off a groundswell of support for a defendant protesting the nation’s health care system. But the judge’s decision means that while Mr. Mangione may ultimately be proved a murderer, New York’s legal system will have nothing to say about the broader implications of his actions.
The decision by Justice Carro is a blow to the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Mr. Bragg had argued that a terrorism charge was warranted because Mr. Mangione had targeted the chief executive, Brian Thompson, in the media capital of the world, Midtown Manhattan, at the beginning of a busy morning, hoping to create a spectacle that would help further his message.
The terrorism charges were always bullsh-t, so I’m glad this part was dismissed pre-trial. “Terrorism against healthcare CEOs” isn’t a thing. Murder? Sure. What happened to Brian Thompson was absolutely murder in cold blood. But it wasn’t terrorism. I’m genuinely fascinated to see what Luigi’s legal team does next, because it feels like the state’s case isn’t actually that strong.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
It’s nice that even in prison his eyebrows are on point. Credit where credit is due.
Which makes his case more interesting. The guy in the police photo, the one with the mask, had a unibrow. All this time, even in prison, Luigi never had a unibrow. Maybe he’s regularly grooming his eyebrows but it doesn’t make any sense that he would let it grow into unibrow and then all of the sudden he would pluck them.
Luigi is protected in prison by other inmates. They clean up his unibrow and give him haircuts. It’s a message to the guards and everyone in the system that Luigi is valuable and to leave him alone. If the unibrow shows up I assume it’s an old pic.
Hummm. The terrorism charge seemed reasonable to me. People who kill abortion providers are committing domestic terrorism. Similar situation here. He seems to have killed a man was who was engaged in completely legal behavior (no matter how much the killer disagreed with the morality of that behavior) in part to instill fear in other healthcare executives. Regardless, I can’t imagine he will ever walk free.
If you go by the intent of the law, the terrorism charges weren’t going to hold
Even if you go by the letter of the law, the terrorism charges were tenuous at best.
I’m not sure. Murder of abortion providers is based on political ideology meant to affect women and doctors everywhere. This guy killed a person he was made at specifically, for something that happened to him personally. I dont see them as being the same.
I remember him being surrounded by like 50 cops as he was transferred to New Yorks custody, like he was Hannibal Lecter or something. I’m willing to bet there’s going to be problems with some of the evidence – the local cops who got him at McDonald’s were small town, I’m willing to bet they screwed up something. Hasn’t his lawyer said he wasn’t mirandized, and that’s why he yelled at cameras when he was first perp walked?
This man can NOT take a bad picture
That top photo looks like hilarious meme material. But yes, he is the most photogenic.
Just to be pedantic, Luigi Mangione is not accused of murdering a Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson was a Healthcare INSURANCE CEO. A man who ran a company that not only doesn’t provide healthcare services but is also responsible to shareholders, not policy holders. In fact, their business model is to deny coverage.
Yes, their business model is to deny coverage. And many people have died and suffered unnecessarily because of it.
Does that mean he can’t get death penalty? Or is that for one of the federal charges?
A question for those with legal knowledge:
Can the fact that Charlie Kirk’s murderer wrote something on the bullet casings, possibly copying Luigi, affect Luigi’s trial? In a sense that he started a really dangerous trend?
A “really dangerous trend” of writing on bullet casings? How is writing on bullet casings dangerous?
Writing on them in itself isn’t dangerous, but people deciding to shoot victims so they could use this method of “texting”, on the other hand, could be.
Mangione’s message was connected to the motive. The Charlie Kirk killer’s wasn’t, he wrote some internet bro nonsense and the media lapped it up and spent 2 days guessing why that was there and explaining the lingo to old(er) people. And as soon as the internet finds something “mysterious”, people want to copy it.
I can imagine we’ll see more of that in the future.
Terrorism or no, this guy should go to jail for life. Pending a trial by jury, of course. He’s not a sympathetic figure. You can’t just murder people on the street. Full stop.