The Attorney General has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty. The charge that carries the death penalty is murder with a firearm.
A couple of updates, a year on from the killing of Brian Thomson.
First, back in September, the judge in the New York state case dismissed the two murder-terrorism charges against Mangione. That means the highest charge he’s now facing is second degree murder.
Second, there’s a hearing underway now on a defence motion to suppress evidence seized from Mangione’s backpack at the time he was arrested.
Defence argues the police should hsve got a warrant before opening it.
Prosecution argues inevitable discovery, since they did get a warrant later that day.
Off-topic, hidden
I do not understand the US system. The man drew a weapon and shot his victim, all clearly premeditated. What is the bar for first degree murder?
Being Black, maybe?
Seriously? That’s just offensive.
Different states have different definitions of “first degree”. This was in New York. Look it up.
Off-topic, hidden
I’m South African/Zimbabwean. Both countries have a Black majority and have had white minority rule.
Excuse me for being sensitive to racism. It sort of comes with the territory.
I’m a white guy who actively benefited from institutional racism in both countries. I think I might know slightly more on the subject.
And yes, in your home country Black men are disproportionately incarcerated. How about that?
Edit: flagged for hijack, which was completely my fault. My apologies to moderators
As @hajario says, before speculating about racism, you could check the definition of 1st degree murder in New York:
I’m not a US lawyer, and only know the facts that have been mentioned in the media, but I don’t see anything there that applies to Mangione. Do you?
And here’s second degree, the charge he’s facing:
Second-degree murder is the second most serious homicide offense in New York. It is defined as when someone commits an intentional killing without a felony under New York’s felony murder rule, or an unintentional killing which either exhibits a “depraved indifference to human life” or an unintentional killing caused by the commission or attempted commission of a felony under New York’s felony murder rule.
So, an intentional killing without an aggravating factor. That seems pretty close to what he’s alleged to have done.
Didn’t he say that he was killing the CEO to make other CEOs afraid and inspire change?
New York law defines terrorism thusly:
It seems pretty obvious that his intent was to intimidate and coerce billionaires and CEOs (who are civilians, last I checked) so I’m pretty flabbergasted that the terrorism charges were dismissed.
I’m not. The DA reasonably thought that they wouldn’t get a conviction on that and wanted a more sure thing. They need to be practical. That’s my speculation anyway. There is a significant amount of information that we don’t know.
The DA didn’t drop the charge (that’s why I said the charges were dismissed, not dropped), the judge at a hearing said that there wasn’t enough evidence that Luigi was trying to inspire fear, instead he argued that he was trying to inspire support for a movement to pressure the health care industry.
Which, yeah, that’s true -most terrorist hope that their terrorist actions will inspire other burgeoning terrorists to commit acts of terror for the same cause - but that doesn’t make it any less terroristic. He killed a CEO to make CEOs fear and change their behavior as a result; that’s textbook terrorism.
I apologize for the dismissed vs dropped error. The judge has seen much more evidence than we have. You may be correct in the end but you’re doing a lot of speculation.
As I read more about it, I don’t think there’s a difference in evidence, it’s that even though Luigi killed the CEO with the intent of inspiring fear in healthcare industry operatives in order to change their behavior, New York state law has interpreted “a civilian population” very very narrowly.
There was a case where the DA tried to charge gang bangers with terrorism because they argued the gang was trying to intimidate the Mexican-American population in a neighborhood through violence. The court didn’t technically rule on that argument, because they just said “clearly the intent of the law was not to elevate gang on gang violence to terrorism”, which is totally fair; but they did briefly discuss the argument about intimidating the Mexican-American population of a neighborhood and (again, this is absolutely staggering to me, but it’s the case) implied even that wouldn’t count as “a civilian population”.
If someone shot up a mosque with the intent of intimidating NYC Muslims, or a gender affirming care clinic to intimidate trans people, it sounds like it WOULD NOT count as “terrorism” under this law (which is WILD to me), although presumably it would be some sort of hate crime.
…
Is Luigi also facing federal charges?
Fwiw, i was also surprised the terrorism charge was dropped. Maybe the judge thought he was just a guy pissed off at the insurance companies and wasn’t trying to indoor others. 
The evidence suppression hearing has now lasted several days, which is quite unusual. IANAL but I think such procedures are usually only a few hours. Maybe the judge is being extra careful in a high profile case?
Imho, the defense have a reasonable objection about the backpack search (again IANAL) - the police are now claiming that they searched the back because they thought it might have a bomb. But they did not call in the bomb squad or ask people to leave the McDonads?
But we will see what the judge thinks.
…and of course, there was never a bomb or hint of a bomb in the actual crime he was linked to.
I would think if the sum total of their evidence at the time was they talked to the guy, hundreds of miles from the crime scene, because of his bushy eyebrows - then they would need some serious reason to search him. Discovery may not have been inevitable.
Do they even need what was in the backpack to convict him of murder? Aren’t the eyewitnesses enough?
From the video I’ve seen, when the police approached him his face was completely uncovered. Weren’t there already photos of him released to the public as a “person of interest”?
Also, at the end of the clip one of the officers was calling in the fake New Jersey driver’s license - what was the result of that check? If it came back as fake, plus the guy looks like the guy in the photo, that might be enough for “inevitable discovery” (which I had never heard of until now) to apply.
If someone is arrested and jailed (like for using a fake ID) isn’t it standard procedure to inventory everything in their possession to ensure that everything is returned to them when they leave? Or is that just a TV/movie trope?
The backpack contained the gun used in the crime, as well as his “manifesto”.
There is other evidence from CCTV and DNA on items near the scene, but the backpack stuff is pretty important.
I’ve not seen a mention of worries about bomb in the coverage.
This article says that the police were concerned that the backpack may have a gun. That doesn’t seem an unwarranted concern in the circumstances.
The article also says that the police believed it was a search incident to arrest, which is an exception to the warrant requirement set by the 4th Amendment.
The defence are arguing that by the time the police searched the backpack, they had already arrested Mangione and the backpack was out of his control, so search incident to arrest doesn’t apply.
The more evidence the better. The prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
Each piece of evidence is a brick in the wall. The more bricks, the stronger the wall, and the less vulnerable if one of the bricks is excluded.