Really burying the lede here - murder charges dropped
Federal murder charge was dropped, which was the one that carried the death penalty.
He still faces NY State murder charges, and federal stalking charges, all of which carry heavy sentences, up to and including life.
That seems reasonable. Now it’s up to whether their evidence and chain of custody hold up.
Even though I do think Luigi is guilty, I think the failures and politicization of this case mean he deserves to go free.
And let it be a lesson to law enforcement that catching a guy at all costs and politicians that throwing the book including massive performative peep walks will ruin your case.
I don’t think he’s guilty of anything. What evidence do you have to the contrary? Please don’t bring up the planted weapon etc
He wrote a blog titled Luigi Mangione’s last entry (or similar). It outlined his issues, the problems with the health insurance industry, and that he was going to do something big about it and this would be his last article right before he would have left to go to New York.
I can’t find it anymore though, so this is all new paraphrasing from memory about a blog post I teased a year ago. and would be circumstantial at best in court.
I don’t think he’d have a manifesto with him in his bag, because that was his manifesto. I don’t think he’d have kept the gun on him. I don’t think a McDonald’s employee spotted him from the masked photos, and I don’t think he even looks like the photos they released before his arrest. I don’t know that he’d have a fake ID for the bus, there are a million reasons to visit NYC.
I think they caught him from cellphone snooping, illegal location data, then planted evidence with their broken chain of custody on his bag.
I do agree with you that most likely he did it. But that doesn’t necessarily make him guilty. Everyone in the jury pool needs to understand that simple fact, the guilty/not guilty verdict is ultimately decided by the jury and not by the facts nor the law.
And even if they think that he did it, they can decide to ignore that for any reason, like deciding it was justified. Jury nullification is not an abstract concept, is not illegal, and clearly happens more than prosecutors want to admit when you start looking at similar politically charged incidents.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Thanks, I was wondering about the potential sentences.
-Federal murder charges and gun charges have been dismissed, but state murder charges have not been (NY state does not have death penalty)
-Federal stalking charges are still in play
-Backpack evidence will be included in the trial
-Including the “manifesto” as evidence
