The Ivy League graduate arrested on suspicion of assassinating the CEO of UnitedHealthcare took issue with two of the prosecutor’s claims during his first court appearance on Monday night. Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested earlier that day at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Penn., carrying a backpack with a black 3D-printed pistol, silencer, loaded Glock magazine and fake IDs, according to the criminal complaint. Prosecutors believe he gunned down Brian Thompson outside an investors meeting in New York
This is actually funny, because from everything we’ve heard, it was definitely very premeditated; wonder why they didn’t go with first-degree murder…
The definition that legally applies for 1st degree murder is a lot more strict than people usually think.
Here’s a partial summary:
A more complete summary of the law is given in this video around 8:49.
First degree is very hard to prove, and losing a case because you went for first over second degree murder would be embarrassing for any prosecutor.
Based on the footage already made public, I don’t see how there could be any doubt about it being 100% premeditated… unless they aren’t sure they got the right guy.
Well there’s certainly doubt right now. We’ve heard about what was written on the bullets, and the details of how that came to be written on the bullets are incredibly relevant. At some point that story is going to be spelled out, and it’s easy to imagine that the prosecution can do so in a reasonable fashion, but they haven’t yet. So I think we should stick with our innocent until proven guilty viewpoint, especially knowing the temptation for cops and prosecutors to lie to the public.
We already saw a multiple high profile cases this year that involved cops lying on the stand and erasing or planting evidence, and I’m not saying this is the same, but we certainly shouldn’t rush to assume that anything the pigs tell us is true, especially not NYPD.
He tripped multiple times in short succession while cleaning his gun. Could happen to anyone.
Yeah, and I mean, he had a manifesto, and wrote a targeted message on his shell casings… this clearly wasn’t spur of the moment.