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.
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.
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 🙂
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.
Why the fuck does the prosecution have the ability to put punishments on the table that are known to bias jury selection?
Because the system itself is rigged in favor of the prosecution by design.
Why is the jury selection not random
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
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.
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)?
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.
No trial by jury for terrorists.
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.
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 ☝️
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
“Forgot”
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!
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.
The federal system gives the judge a lot more power, they can basically pick the jury and evidence themselves, and appeals really, really suck.
It doesn’t much matter if it’s easier for the defense to argue that. It matters what the judge and jury find.
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.
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.
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
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
ok but killing a millionaire is defensible
Not because they’re a millionaire. Because they’re a CEO whose policies directly resulted in unnecessary suffering and death.
Billionaires do deserve to die for being billionaires though.
You can’t amass that type of wealth without being responsible for human suffering en masse. It’s impossible.
This. 👆
you can’t amass that type of wealth without . . .
Sure, but that’s not for being billionaires; that’s for what they did to become billionaires and perhaps for what they are (or are not) doing to maintain their status.
Leftist messaging is plagued by the fact that what what is said literally is often something obviously wrong or stupid which is supposed to stand in (by convention, I suppose) for the point that is “actually” being made.
It makes dismissing leftist messages pretty appealingly mechanical for those who are opposed or even just unfamiliar – they need only point out the obvious way in which the literal meaning of the actual words the leftist has said is wrong or stupid. You can’t fault much the latter sort of person here, because there’s really not any indication that you don’t just wholesale believe the stupid thing you said.
It’s a critical problem that’s had a crippling impact on the acceptance of leftist movements in the United States. So it’s best to say what you mean. It really helps.
yeah I think this distinction is important. we don’t need to kill the working professionals who saved money and invested wisely throughout their careers. many of those people will eventually be millionaires, but like, ones of millions.
once you get to hundreds of millions it starts to look like there was no possible moral way to arrive at that.
We should also make a distinction for the arts and artisans. In theory, an artist can sell their work for a billion dollars, making them a billionaire. I’m fine with that, because nobody gets exploited in the process. Like if an actor or rock star charges a billion dollars for a performance, or a painter charges a billion dollars for a painting, or a carpenter charges a billion to install hardwood floors. If people are willing to pay it, then I don’t really see a problem.
That said, their wealth should still be taxed like a motherfucker.
I think there’s still a pretty solid argument that its shitty to remain a billionare. If I won that kind of money on the lottery I’d set asside enough to retire very comfortably (and still feel a little bad about it) and then build affordable housing and shit.
Hoarding that much money is, in my opinion, just as bad as hoarding a cure for cancer. There are like half a dozen people with enough wealth to eliminate hunger and homelessness worldwide, but every one of them refuses to lift a finger beyond performative bullshit for PR. The level of inhumanity it takes to be like that is off the charts. It’s sociopathic.
Agreed, its a bit like self defense or defending others.
If you are armed and see a murder about to happen you CAN legally intervene with a firearm. You do not have to standby and let someone get killed.
UHC was killing thousands and apparently the government was/is fine with it. Thus … it was a defensive killing.
This discussion would get me banned off of Reddit (again).
My favorite Reddit alt got disappeared because the degree of subtlety with which I conducted my advocacy for political violence dipped once by accident below the acceptable threshold. So I’m here. Hah!
deleted by creator
I’ll defend it:
He traveled to murder a guy he never met before after stalking him online, carved words from a manifesto into bullet casings, engineered a 3D printable unregistered firearm, fled the scene of the crime with enough cash to live off of for years, and openly denies any wrongdoing by pleading innocent. He is absolutely likely to try it again, or perhaps worse, if released.
If the death penalty exists, and honestly I don’t think it should, then it should apply fairly and treat all human life equally.
In what world does someone on the run carry a fuck load of cash, versus stashing it at a destination? Also you need to read the police reports, they fucked up big time, they had to search his backpack 3 fucking times before finding the supposed murder weapon, a back pack, 3 times. Think about that. Oh yeah and the third time was out of site of all the body and stores cameras.
He is absolutely likely to try it again, or perhaps worse, if released.
That would justify the life penalty (if proven), it exists for a reason.
Nothing justifies the death penalty, really.
True, it’s barbarism, plain and simple.
He *allegedly" did those things. Part of the problem here, and with the death penalty generally, is the apparently general presumption of his guilt. He has not been to trial yet. Under US law, he is to have the presumption of innocence until proven guilty (as it is entirely possible, however unlikely it may be, that they have the wrong guy or that the charges do not reflect what actually happened), and so it is unreasonable by any measure for the federal AG to be stating that they’re pushing for the death penalty before he has even been federally charged.
Further, he didn’t plead “innocent”, as thats … not a thing? He pled “not guilty”, to the charges, which doesn’t intrinsically mean that he’s denying what actions were accused, but only that he believes the legal charges are not commensurate/congruent with whatever actions he did take (which, again, may or may not even include what he was accused of, cause it could be the wrong guy or an innacurate charge, hence why we have trials in the first place). E.g., someone who killed in self defense but was charged with murder would obviously plead not guilty even if they did in fact kill the person, because killing in self defense is not murder by any legal definition of either. Moreover, “openly denying any wrongdoing” would be entirely appropriate to do if he is in fact the wrong guy and he didn’t actually do anything.
Idgaf what hes guilty or innocent of, a fair trial means he doesn’t get to dodge the maximum sentence because of whiny fans.
He is currently innocent of all of those charges.
We don’t get to pick and choose when innocent before proven guilty gets applied. Openly stating that they’re seeking the death penalty before he’s even been indicted is weird and wrong.
Nobody is talking about taking him out back and shooting him. They’re discussing if the maximum punishment for the crime if and when found guilty should include death.
Well this case absolutely looks like any other murder charge doesn’t it? And to touch on your other comment, it’s just as fair for everyone. The search for the suspect was like any other, the treatment with the media was like any other, and the federal government is holding back from intervening in a state case to poison the already tainted public before a jury can be formed just like any other case. Right?
Nothing has been proven, and there is no defense for how this person is being treated even IF he did do what is alleged. This country was founded on this principle.
No, they’re not.
They’re not discussing what the appropriate penalties should be—which, by the way, is typically done at the end of a trial during the sentencing phase, after all evidence has been presented and a guilty verdict has been delivered, because punishment is supposed to be reflective of the evidence presented—they’re saying that they’ve already decided that the target penalty is death.
That’s a clear nod that they want to make an example, a concept divorced from justice.
Welcome to down votes, where you fail to see that they are being extra hard on him because he shot one of the surface dwellers. The difference is his alleged motivations which were to kill someone that has been actively engaging in spreading human misery for profit. In a practical sense, he allegedly killed a mass murderer that was for some reason never charged with a crime.
Oh boohoo the murderer is getting prosecuted thats so mean.
No, a man with the right to be innocent until proven guilty is being presumed guilty before due process can be done.
There is a difference
Bro idk who tf you think you’re arguing with or over what but it’s not me. He deserves a fair trial, and that means not dropping maximum sentences because some dweebs asked incessantly.
If you want to change the laws then change it for everyone, not just this fucking loser.
I debated how to reply to you for probably too long. The best reply I could think of, is the following:
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
I mean, sure he went through a lot of effort, but I don’t think we should hold that against him.
After all, US soldiers goes through a lot of effort to kill people they’ve never met before.
All that effort is literally the criteria for murder in the third degree. It’s a worse crime than a crime of passion or negligence.
If the death penalty exists, and honestly I don’t think it should, then it should apply fairly and treat all human life equally.
So all premeditated murder should be punished by death? What do you mean when you say all human life should be treated equally?
Luigi did nothing wrong.
If any are persecuted with the death penalty as an option then it should apply equally and fairly.
You shouldn’t be able to dodge sentences because you are the tankei/anarchist-equivalent to Markiplier internet celebrity status.
That will run into some issues in the long run. If one is willing to carry out a death penalty, they themselves have now murdered and should be subjected to the same fate. If not, then anyone who has murdered a murderer, should be given the rights the executioners get, to avoid those penalties. No issue is cut and dry or black and white. And absolutely, we should be well past death penalties.
Well then that’s easy, just use firing squads and then you won’t know who killed him.
No, anyone who is willing to kill another human, signs up to do so, and is part of a mob who does, is in the same boat.
Womp Womp guess you’ll have to write a letter about it.
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Eh, that just leads back into only bad people can kill which is just bad people winning again. Ultimately we need good people who are willing to do bad things. Though ideally there just shouldn’t be execution.
We shouldn’t. And if we were to make it “fair”, anyone who is willing to participate in that kind of punishment would then be brought to justice under the same rule of law. So if one is willing to be an executioner, they to shall be executed. So the baddies would get their justice in the end too.
Then, we’d eventually either run out of peeps, or at least the “death is the answer” ones.
I remember back in the day in history class we’d discuss if murdering a tyrant is morally wrong and how it should be treated by the law. The class pretty much agreed if you 360 quick tomahawk someone who causes millions of deaths it’s fair game.
I’m so ashamed of myself for failing the litmus test created by a bunch of 15 year olds. /s
There is nothing fair about applying the death penalty for a man acting in defence of his country. That shit should be reserved for school shooters or republicans.
He is absolutely likely to try it again if released.
Just for the sake of argument. You say that because he killed and probably will kill again, death penalty is justifiable . By the same line of reasoning this should be valid as well for the judge, the attorney and every other person responsible for the final execution. You could even make the argument for the victim, as he killed people by actively rejecting proper medical care in multiple cases.
The judge and the enforcers are empowered by the State. The attorney is empowered by the Bar Association. The jury is a collection of Luigi’s peers to provide unanimous judgement.
This is not Luigi vs a room full of random people. This is Luigi vs The United States of America and Luigi vs New York State. We all collectively participated in the system that wrote these laws and how to enforce them, or at least I hope we do.
If you don’t like how it works? Good, go pursue political action unlike Luigi.
Still a not a valid argument. It is an argument of authority, a typical logical fallacy. Just because a group of people is reputable and says it right does not mean it is right. I mean a possible jail sentence would be as adequate to prevent him from doing it again, as a counter example. So the argument for killing him would basically narrow down to “because authorities said it is okay”.
Not everything is a fallacy because it is an appeal to authority, it becomes a fallacy when an otherwise illogical choice is appealed to simply because of authority.
When somebody murders another person it is wrong, and it then falls on the public to decide what the best course of action is to prevent such things from happening again to people, including people like themselves. They decided a long time ago that the death sentence was easier than caging a man for life. Now you can try to argue that this is illogical, but you haven’t, you’ve simply argued that the public is wrong without any reasoning.
Not just a reputable group of people, the public as a whole. Democracy. JFC, did you even read my reply?
“Worse”
It most of that is them saying it. And they lie all the time. I don’t believe much of it, and I think I need more untampered evidence showing it was him. I’m rooting for the innocent scapegoat.
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
