In December, Luigi Mangione was arrested for shooting health insurance executive Brian Thompson. Last week, Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced that she was seeking the death penalty. It’s a highly unusual announcement, since Mangione hasn’t even been indicted yet on a federal level. (He has been indicted in Manhattan.) By intervening in this high-profile case, the Trump administration has made clear that it believes that CEOs are especially important people whose deaths need to be swiftly and mercilessly avenged.
He’d became a martyr. The best chance way the ruling class could handle this is letting him go on the condition that he denies every publicity possible for a given years, even “just” imprisonment would communicate “we fear guys like this”.
It’s very naive of people to think that in an authoritarian dictatorship controlled by the world’s wealthiest people, that there won’t be a LOT of unjust deaths in the coming years.
I will be positively shocked if they don’t make a very public example of Mangione. It’s going to hurt and that’s what they want. They want to kill him in front of us so we feel pain. Then they’re going to do it again and again with other people whom we don’t want to see die. Remember that. This is what happens.
This is what 45% of eligible voters thought would never happen so they stayed home. Too much trouble. Too hard to figure out the truth (by googling for 30 seconds). Too many excuses to not rock the boat, and now the boat is rocking us all out.
The truth is, Luigi will be an exceptional martyr. The majority of deaths will be forgotten by the masses, because a million deaths is a statistic.
The key in the coming years is to survive, organize, strategize, and recover. Dying is a waste. We must all do what it takes to live and fight from a better position.
Our saving grace is the incompetency of the enemy. They are following plans created decades ago by aging and dying villains. The inheritors are inept and despicable.
Hitler shot himself and Mousolini was ripped to pieces because they overplayed their hands. Keep in touch with a local community, and figure out a way forward once our enemy is vulnerable.
Sadly I think he’s going to be a martyr like Alexi Navalny. The 1% is patient, and they know they can distract us and grind us down. We can raise hell for a moment, but they know our weakness is our stomaches.
Yessss…show us you fear…we feed on it.
Sigh. Yet another article assuming Mangione’s guilt. Ben Burgis didn’t even bother to say ‘allegedly’ anywhere.
He didn’t do it.
They’re pinning some rich guy bullshit on him.
Brian Thompson was stepping out in his wife.
She hired a hitman from El Salvador to kill him so she could have all his stuff.
Luigi is just some kid swept up in police railroading.
Luigi is innocent.
if you have evidence you should send it to the court
That sounds like a thing they’ll let happen
Your observation about the timing of Bondi’s call for the death penalty—before a federal indictment—is particularly sharp and highlights the political dimensions effectively. From experience observing these processes, such early, high-profile interventions are indeed rare and often signal broader political messaging, like the implied valuation of the victim’s status you discuss. It’s a crucial perspective on how justice can intersect with politics in high-profile cases.
I mean, it’s somewhat defensible, right? He did kill someone, so isn’t it symmetric if he gets killed? You can obviously make an argument against this but isn’t the tone of the article written to make it seem like this is just laughable, when it’s really not?
I’m sick of these hyperbolic headlines just to capture clicks.
Did he?
I’m completely serious, I have legitimate doubts about if Luigi is the adjuster. Everything about the arrest and (apparently illegally) collected evidence is extremely skechy.
After almost a week, the guy who escaped NYC cleanly (while leaving a backpack full of monopoly money in central park and signed bullet casings at the scene) is carrying around a signed confession and the murder weapon at McDonald’s?
There’s literally no other evidence than what they allegedly found on his person. The guy doesn’t look that much like the person/people in the videos, the way they found him (an old man reporting to a cashier that a person with only their eyes visible looked like the shooter from the security cams) is sketchy as hell, and the evidence is straight up out of a police wet dream about the perfect arrest
This guy deserves a trial, like everyone does. The state apparently has no case against him at this point too
So why does every conversation start with assuming he did it?
I don’t assume he did it. I assume the conversation is phrased as “if he is found guilty, does he deserve death?”. If the state is unable to convince a jury he did it, he should be let free, just like every other case.
He did kill someone
I don’t assume he did it
You posted both of these. One isn’t true. Did you change your mind between your original post and your second?
If he is found guilty does not mean he is guilty. That’s the problem with the death penalty. You can release someone if future evidence disproves the conviction. You can’t bring someone back to life if you give them the death penalty.
No. You are fundamentally incorrect in that HE HAS NOT BEEN FOUND GUILTY FOR KILLING ANYONE AT ALL AT THIS TIME. You, talking “past” the conclusion as if it is foregone–just like the fascists are, are part of the problem.
I’m sick of dipshits like YOU skipping over due process.
The state killing its own citizens is never morally defensible.
It’s even more egregious when political influence tries to exert pressure on the legal process in an effort to prejudice that verdict.
The state killing its own citizens is never morally defensible.
A citizen killing another citizen is never morally defensible, and yet, here we are.
A citizen killing another citizen is never morally defensible
That’s just plain not true. There are situations that are not just morally defensible, but legally justifiable.
For example: If an active shooter (a citizen) is killing people (or threatening to kill people), any given citizen is morally and legally justified with taking the shooter’s life to preserve the lives of others.
I never claimed it was.
You’re calling him guilty. He hasn’t even been tried yet. You’ve let these hyperbolic headlines make up your mind for you and convince you of a verdict. That’s exactly what Bondi and this article is trying to do, think for you. Forget the click. You’ve already given them what they want.
The issue is that he’s only been indicted in New York, and New York abolished the death penalty more than twenty years ago.
The Feds would need to press their own charges if they wanted to pursue the death penalty, which they have not done yet. That’s the laughable part: they’re trying to dictate sentencing before they pressed charges, gathered evidence, or secured a conviction. And the only way to get a death sentence is by unanimous jury vote during sentencing, which, let’s be honest, is going to be very difficult to get rid Luigi.
None of this, of course, is to say that what Mangione did was justifiable or wise.
Um, fuck you? He hasn’t been convicted and the author’s assumption here, that Mangione is guilty of what he has been accused of, is part of the fucking problem.
Damn, when did Jacobin get soft?
The bullets Mangione used to kill Thomson had “deny,” “delay,” and “depose” inscribed on them.
Allegedly. The reporter forgot to be professional for a moment.
The reporters can always seem to sane-wash Trump and his ilk, and always give them the benefit of the doubt, but not Mangione. Musk gave a salute that was “awkward” and “looked similar to” a Nazi salute, but Mangione is just presumed guilty. Trump is a “successful businessman” despite bankrupting numerous companies, but Mangione is assumed to be a guilty evil murderer before he’s even indicted!
“Forgot”
I think the death penalty being on the table would increase the likelihood of the jury finding a reasonable doubt or jury nullification. It would only hurt the prosecution imo.
OR it’s going to prejudice the jury against him, like it usually does.
When capital punishment is on the table, only people who are in favor of it are selected for the jury, and people who are in favor of state murder are MUCH more likely to return a guilty verdict than people who aren’t.
That’s one of hundreds of reasons why civilized legal systems don’t murder prisoners anymore.
Why the fuck does the prosecution have the ability to put punishments on the table that are known to bias jury selection?
Why is the jury selection not random
Because the system itself is rigged in favor of the prosecution by design.
Yup. One of the main reasons people oppose the death penalty is because of the proven record of innocent people receiving death sentences. Approximately 4% of people who receive death sentences are actually innocent. We execute many innocent people in this country. The system absolutely does not operate on the principle of “it is better for 1000 guilty to go free than for one innocent to be unjustly punished.”
Many oppose the death penalty because they realize just how poor our justice system is at actually determining guilt and innocence. Those who assume it is near-infallible will be much more likely to support the death penalty. So if you screen out those opposed to death sentences, you also screen out people who are more skeptical of the criminal justice system overall.
Doesn’t the defense have just as much say in terms of who gets selected out and which signals are used to parse that
Not really, no.
AFAIK, the defense and the prosecution get the same number of “just because it’s bad for my side” exclusions, but not being inclined to render a guilty verdict if there’s a possibility of the death penalty is an automatic exclusion that doesn’t count towards the prosecution’s “freebies”.
So yeah, the moment death penalty is on the table, the jury will be biased AND the defense will be much more likely to consider a plea deal for a lesser punishment, further stacking the deck in favor of the prosecution winning one way or the other regardless of actual guilt.
Oh, shit! I’d really appreciate a source for that, if you have it handy
Didn’t have it handy, but didn’t take long to find this from Penn State, this from Cornell, and this from the US Office of Justice Programs that the DOGE kakistocracy has apparently not found yet…
Thank you!
You’re very welcome 🙂
There’s no way this jury is going to be allowed to find him innocent much less jury nullification. If they can’t be bribed they’ll be threatened.
Why does it feel like the trump administration would use Mangione’s acquittal by jury as a reason to try to attack and do away with the 6th Amendment (trial by jury amendment)?
No trial by jury for terrorists.
Luckily it would be really hard for them to actually get rid of it. I wouldn’t put it past them to try to start doing summary executions or just illegally trying to detain people without trial or whatever but there’s 0 chance they get the support to actually remove that amendment.
They’re just going to skip the courts altogether like they’ve been doing.
The tact taken by this administration isn’t trying to amend the Constitution, its to simply ignore it. There are three branches of government in the USA. trump’s Executive branch and the Legislative appear to be in nearly lock-step in ignoring the Constitution and their duties to uphold it. The Supreme Court has capitulated in almost every action trump’s Executive has asked, with only minor pushback. The recent 9-0 Supreme Court decision requiring the trump administration to return of Ábrego García to the USA is the first real pushback we’ve seen. So far trump is continuing to ignore the return requirement.
In other words, the Constitution is worthless if the bodies in power charged with its defense choose to simply break their oath of office and not defend it.
they blocked the corpse pile at cecot on apple maps but what about the other satellite photo providers?
They won’t “do away with it” in any official way, but they’ve already stopped obeying it.
I kind of agree, if I were in the jury, it would make me think twice about finding them guilty since I would feel like I have someone’s death on my hands.
Yeah but you’d be automatically excluded from jury duty if you admitted that. It’s like nullification.
My worry is that trump is thinking of sending him to CECOT.
Trump always starts with the “worst” criminals as he knows it’s hard for Democrats or others to object since they don’t want to be “on the side of criminals,” but it won’t end there.
Yep, if you set the bar extraordinarily high, then you have to jump extraordinarily high. Bondi’s likely doing more harm than good for her cause.
Assuming his trial is carried out normally and isn’t a sham
This ☝️
Trump and his sycophants are really really dumb. Like, really. All they have is muscle. Zero brains.
I didn’t realize muscle was so flabby
I’m glad they’re seeking the death penalty.
Because it makes it much easier for the defence team to argue that the prosecution is trying to turn the law into a spectacle, and that Luigi should be acquitted of all charges.
It doesn’t much matter if it’s easier for the defense to argue that. It matters what the judge and jury find.
The federal system gives the judge a lot more power, they can basically pick the jury and evidence themselves, and appeals really, really suck.
He should run for office
Well, we have a convicted felon and rapist as president already.
Exactly. They’ve set a precedent that running for office gets you out of any consequences. I really want to see what happens if Mangione runs for congress
This guy killed a patrician and now that class has totally seized controlled of government.
Prove he killed someone.
we’re not real big on justice at the moment…
Supposedly
Eat your local CEO
Californians would die of heart attack after eating all of them
At least then they could afford to have a heart attack. Heck, have two
It’s BOGO!
after they first died of state mandated cancer
