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.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Oh yeah, this guy.

    He couldn’t have done it, he was spending that time at my house helping me move. You guys were there too, remember?

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Great place, except for how far from NYC it is. I miss the days of being able to travel to NYC in less than 24 hours

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      And if you’re on the jury, you never say the words “jury nullification”. It technically isn’t allowed, and you can be removed from the jury.

      But if you just think there’s reasonable doubt, then nothing can be done.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        It’s totally allowed. It’s why citizen juries exist instead of professional jurors, and a jury’s right to determine the law is established in Article I, Section 8 of the New York Constitution. It’s specifically discussing libel cases, but that doesn’t necessarily limit them.

        You still shouldn’t say it, because you’ll be removed anyway, but jury nullification is the legal system’s last line of defense against unjust just laws.

        • Anamnesis@lemmy.world
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          Its “allowed” in the sense that you can return a verdict of innocent without providing an explanation for why you found him innocent, and the court is not allowed to issue a verdict notwithstanding the jury in criminal cases. It’s perfectly legal for the court to dismiss you as a juror if you announce your intention to nullify at any point in the trial or explain that your intention is to nullify when you announce your verdict. So if you intend to nullify, you should stay quiet about it until you finish deliberating.

          Source: I’m a law student and we just covered this in Criminal Law.

          • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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            23 hours ago

            They can also dismiss you for saying you intend to declare guilt no matter what.

            A juror deciding a verdict before hearing the case should be dismissed.

          • tourist@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Do you think enough people will learn of this in time for the jury selection, in theory?

            Historically, how often has this happened?

            Can nods or other physical gestures count as an intent to nullify the process? Like a fresh tattoo of the green super mario bro. There’s plausible deniability there, right?

            Sorry for all the questions, I’m just sick of talking to chatbots. I crave answers from human beings. I don’t want a chatbot’s heartless, supposedly unbiased answer. Throw in as much bias as you’d like.

      • arotrios@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        That being said, if you don’t want jury duty for a criminal case, mentioning jury nullification is a sure way to get the prosecution to kick you out of the jury pool. It’s one of the reasons why I haven’t had to sit on a jury for over 30 years.

      • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        Its 100% supported by Supreme Court precedent.

        Judges are permitted, also supported by precedent, to lie and say it isn’t. That doesnt change that it is though.

    • ccp@lemy.lol
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      19 hours ago

      If you want to participate in jury nullification, it’s imperative that you do your research and know how to conduct yourself. It’s not as simple as just making sure you never say “jury nullification” within hearing range of the court room. And doing your due diligence isn’t as simple as reading some surface-level web pages about how jury nullification works.

      The first thing you need to know is that this is exceedingly difficult. If you get summoned, don’t get summarily dismissed, get through voir dire and onto the jury – here there are already three distinct stages, and passing each of them is its own small miracle. That’s before you even get to the part where you convince the rest of the jury to go along with it, which you have to do without saying the words. You also have to appear to be earnestly engaged in doing your duty as a juror properly. Obstinance is cause for dismissal and contempt, so just sitting there and saying “not guilty” for no reason and refusing to explain yourself or change your position may not go as well as you might think. You have to actually play the game, go along with the process, and bring up reasonable and compelling questions and concerns about the state’s burden of proof.

      Regarding voir dire: Here’s one area where you’ll need to have done in-depth research. If you haven’t even googled things like “detecting deception during voir dire” or “how to identify a stealth juror” – if you haven’t read all the material you can get your hands on that gives advice to attorneys about the nuances of juror vetting and selection – then you haven’t spent enough time knowing your enemy, and you will fail. If you haven’t heard of a “stealth juror” before, you are out of your depth and you will fail. If it hasn’t occurred to you that the attorneys might look you up online (they will) to see if you’ve posted anything that conflicts with what you tell them in court, then you have probably already failed before you even started.

      You will basically need to be in deep cover with regard to your knowledge of and inclination toward jury nullification. It’s not even as easy as just pretending you’ve never heard of it. That can end up being too much of a good thing, too hard to believe, depending. In a similar way, they don’t necessarily want to hear that you’re some kind of totally impartial person with no opinions about anything, no biases. Everyone has those; what they want is people who can set them aside to do the job they’ve been given. It’s surely not an easy balance to strike, seeming like you’re someone who will be a good juror, while making sure you also give the appearance of being a realistic and believable person, and avoiding a host of little reasons why they might decide to use one of their peremptory strikes on you (if you don’t know what that is, you haven’t done enough research and will fail).

      You’ll also need the same obsessive depth of familiarity with the entire process, voir dire to verdict, that someone would have if they actually were some kind of deep cover clandestine agent sent to infiltrate a jury. You will need to accomplish this without ever talking to anyone about your interest in this subject. You have to be either very dedicated or very lucky.

  • Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    Terrorism, according to the United Nations General Assembly:

    Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.

    Luigi certainly didn’t bring the public into a state of terror, if anything quite the opposite - so I suppose the real question is do we class Health Insurance Executives politically as a group of people to incite terror onto?

    I’d argue that a group of people who would happily sign away someone’s life if it meant them getting richer don’t deserve that kind of recognition, but I’d bet the courts will say yes because their rich friends want an example made of him.

    • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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      23 minutes ago

      I dont feel terror or endangered by CEO killing vigilantes (as long as they have good aim and dont cause collateral damage). I’m sure the rest of the general public also feels safer without these CEO psycopaths walking around.

    • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes

      A group such as healthcare CEOs, and the wealthy in general?

      Not that I think he did it. But terrorism doesn’t have to be directed at the public at large.

      • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        New York state terrorism law is this:

        S 490.25 Crime of terrorism.

        1. A person is guilty of a crime of terrorism when, with intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping, he or she commits a specified offense.

        https://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article490.php#p490.25

        • Infynis@midwest.social
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          1 day ago

          Unfortunately, I think there’s an argument that insurance parasites count as a civilian population

          • mkwt@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            However, it’s not at all clear to me that Mr. Mangione may have intended to intimidate or coerce the entire population is health care CEOs with his alleged actions. There’s a decent-looking alternative theory of this case that he may have been just pissed with the one guy.

            These facts will have to explored at trial if the state wants to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          1 day ago

          That comes down to a question of what unit of government was the murder trying to influence. His target was pretty clearly United Healthcare itself, not any part of the government.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Corporations are people here and they see this as terrorism because their managers do.

      Whether a jury will sign off on the Citizens United view of the public as corporate citizens depends on how willing avg jurists are to rationalize the fiction.

  • Today@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Thoughts and prayers, Luigi. Not the fake Republican school shooting ones, real ones!

      • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        A whole lot to protest, actually.

        He ALLEGEDLY killed a man. Not been proven in court yet, and he is claiming that he’s being framed.

        Also even if it’s true, terrorism charges are wildly inappropriate, and are being used here as a threat.

        Then there’s the matter of him being paraded around with a dozen armed guards, a clear violation of international law which guarantees the dignity of prisoners.

        Finally, even if he deliberately murdered the CEO of a large healthcare provider, and deserves jail time, etc., there is still the fact that said CEO was complicit in the deaths of hundreds of patients that had claims denied, for the sake of endless profiteering.

        So, yeah. Protest.

      • Kayday@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        If he is the murderer, which hasn’t been proven, he has a kill count of one. The murderer he allegedly killed was responsible for thousands of deaths.

  • axx@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    On what grounds is the terrorism charge constructed? Seriously.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      On the grounds that he caused terror for the only people that actually matter, the ruling class.

    • MartianSands@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      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

      • onecarmel@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        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

      • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        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.

        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.

      • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        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.

      • Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        22 hours ago

        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.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      We care more about capitalism than anything else and he threatened the rich…

      Like, not saying I agree with it, but the answer for why they’re labeling it terrorism is really obvious

  • 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 day ago

    I was honestly expecting him to be stuck in prison for a while longer so they could keep mistreating him. I hope he gets cleared of these obviously fabricated charges.

    • Beetschnapps@lemmy.world
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      You should think about something better when it comes to this.

      A societal issues of haves and have nots comes to blows and you are saying what? “He’s pretty”

      That’s something you can keep to yourself. Makes you look better.

  • breadguyyyyyyyyy@sh.itjust.works
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    the treatment of this guy has been absolutely evil depraved shit, free Luigi ✊ he didn’t do it and he didn’t write that manifesto