So, Mangione assassinated Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, the US health insurance company with the highest denial rate in the industry.
It’s pretty clear he did it, he was found with a manifesto which amounts to a confession.
“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”
The problem for the prosecution is simple: most people think the assassination was justified. All it takes is one juror to hang on and refuse to convict.
Jury nullification is legal, but it’s not legal to tell jurors they have the right.
But jury nullification is part of the “deal”, the social contract. It’s one reason why people accused of a crime have the right to a jury trial. We all know that the law and justice aren’t the same thing. We gave up the right for private vengeance because it lead to feuds and violence, but in exchange for giving it up we expect the “justice” system to operate in a way which leads to a better society, not a worse one. We expect the law to protect us.
Mangione killed one person. Thompson is a mass murderer. Mangione is a criminal because it’s against the law to kill people who kill by spreadsheet, but it’s legal to kill by spreadsheet.
When the law doesn’t work; when it allows mass murder, there will be some people who take the law into their own hands. As nasty as it is, this is one the real “checks and balances”. If elites won’t work for the common good, if they loot and impoverish and kill too much the masses always have the ability, if not the legal right to fight back. America’s founders were pretty clear about this.
“when the first principles of civil society are violated, and the rights of the whole people are invaded, the common forms of municipal law are not to be regarded. Men may betake themselves to the law of nature.”
Elites are supposed to work for the benefit of all. There must be a case that what they do benefits the majority in society. When it doesn’t there must be some force of recourse.
Mangione broke the law. He almost certainly killed Thompson.
But did he break the law of nature?
Purple Library Guy
Vigilante justice is a bad thing. But when the alternative is no justice at all, one begins to reconsider. I hate peas, would never normally eat them . . . but if I were starving I’d get a bit less fastidious.
someofparts
What monsters we are that the children have to sacrifice themselves like this to pull us back from the abyss.
StewartM
I predict that the jury selection for this trial will have a heavy thumb on the scale to exclude people who might vote to acquit.
A former coworker, highly conservative at that and who I would disagree with on just about everything, did point out that another reason for trial by jury was that instead of selecting jurors for complete ignorance of a topic (which is what we do now, pretty much), a jury selected from a community would know which witnesses were known to be trustworthy in the community and which witnesses were know to be untrustworthy. They would go on reputation.
Oakchair
First they came for the foreigners, I did nothing
Then they came for the sick and ill, I did nothing
Then they came for the homeless, I did nothing
Then they came for the children and old, I did nothing
Then they came for me, and it was too late to do anything
The ruling class wanted a society based on greed, where killing and stomping on people’s faces for money is legal. Well here it is, do you like it?
KT Chong
Even if he is convicted and sent to prison, other inmates are gonna treat him like a hero.
someofparts
The public will treat him like a hero too and the people who mistreat him will be hated.
Curt Kastens
The sad thing is because he acted alone nothing is going to change. An interesting thing is that his children are going to grow up in a world in which a large number of people are going to think that their father deserved to be murdered. I think that will be a good neccessary lesson for them.
Back in the early 1990s the man who headed the agency that sold of East German Companies to western compnies was assassinated. But the assassination changed nothing.
Feral Finster
We don’t expect the justice system to protect us, at least I hope we’re not that naive.
Rather, the justice system is simply an expression of power relations at the moment.
StewartM
Oakchair
First they came for the foreigners, I did nothing
Then they came for the sick and ill, I did nothing
Then they came for the homeless, I did nothing
Then they came for the children and old, I did nothing
Then they came for me, and it was too late to do anything
I find it interesting that this coincides with two other stories:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/social-security-elon-musk
And this very insightful article:
https://www.justsecurity.org/105552/public-framing-mass-deportation/
The latter quoting Trump’s minions that they know and admit that deporting the ‘violent criminal’ undocumented immigrants is a mere drop in the bucket, as undocumented migrants are anywhere from less than one-half to one-quarter likely to commit crimes, violent or otherwise, depending on the study and the crime type.
So what will they do? They will target the LEGAL immigrants, and/or re-classify legal immigrants as illegals. After all, finding the undocumented ones will be difficult and costly, while finding those legally here is easy, no?
Why do they want this? Well, those immigrants are calculated to add a TRILLION dollars or more to US government revenues, including helping to keep SS and Medicare solvent. That’s EXACTLY what they want to prevent from happening. They want to tell seniors, “Oh we’d love to pay for your SS and Medicare, but there’s JUST NO MONEY FOR IT!” (sob) when they deliberately deported the very people who would have kept those funds solvent.
That’s also why they’re anti-abortion (more white domestic babies!). True, a lot of abortions involve non-whites, but they are as deluded about that fact as they are about immigrant crime.
Mark Pontin
“The sad thing is because he acted alone nothing is going to change”
We’ll see. The vast masses of people in Russia pre-1917 thought the same thing, that nothing had ever changed the system so nothing ever was going to change. Then it did.
Though usually certain conditions exist for a nation-state to fall into that kind of unrest. Hemingway — an intelligent guy and a former international correspondent, though he played the dumb brute — made some perceptive comments about what it takes for a society to become revolutionary in one of his 1930s essays.
In the meantime, I just saw this. Online talk is cheap and a Guardian article is about as worthwhile as a fart in an empty room. But interesting if true —
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/11/new-york-police-us-healthcare-hit-list
New York police warn US healthcare executives about online ‘hitlist’
The NYPD’s warning came in a bulletin, which highlighted viral posts publicising the names and salaries of several other health insurance executives. In addition to the social media posts, multiple “wanted” signs featuring corporate chief executives have been posted throughout Manhattan, according to the bulletin, which was first reported by ABC.
The suspect in Thompson’s killing, Luigi Mangione, who has been lionised as a “martyr” on social media – prompting fears that the crime could serve as an inspiration – appeared in a court in Pennsylvania on Tuesday facing charges of second-degree murder. CNN cited two law enforcement officials saying that fingerprints from the assassination scene matched Mangione’s.
CNN has reported that Mangione was found with a notebook, in which he had written about shooting a healthcare executive at a “bean-counter” conference.
“What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” CNN reported officials saying about one of the sections in the notebook. Thompson was shot as he arrived at a hotel for a meeting of UnitedHealthcare investors.
The NYPD bulletin urged companies to step up security, saying the allegations against Mangione had the “capability to inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence”.
“Both prior to and after the suspected perpetrator’s identification and arrest, some online users across social media platforms reacted positively to the killing, encouraged future targeting of similar executives, and shared conspiracy theories regarding the shooting,” it added.
“…My mom was denied chemo multiple times and suffered tremendously they missed her cancer for two years because she was constantly denied … she will have life altering damage because of it,” one user wrote.
Another posted on Reddit: “The politicians are compromised and the corporations are suffocating us – all CEO’s should be considered. Sucks when your government is bought by these CEO’s who immediately impact the masses.”
mago
The killing would be justifiable if it killed the greed and predatory behavior, but alas, such is not the case. There are thousands of ready, willing and able Thompsons out there.
Now young Mangione has to live with the consequences of his actions, and I’m speaking in a personal sense, not legal.
Were I a jury member, I’d vote not guilty to whatever charges they pin on him.
different clue
I wonder if the upper classes will try to get their government to impose and enforce much stricter gun control laws. The liberals will certainly demand it.
anon
I hope you’re right and a jury fails to convict him. He doesn’t deserve life in prison. He has a lot of support but I’ve also spoken to someone who thinks it’s crazy that a murderer is being labeled a hero. Let’s hope that enough jurors are selected who are secretly sympathetic to him.
Curt Kastens
“At a meeting of investors”. I bet that there are a lot more “investors” than there are CEOs.
Back in 2004 I figured that the number of people in the United States that needed to get executed or more than 40 year prison sentences, to be able to return the United States to a republic was not more than 10,000. But after what I have seen happen over the past 20 years I would now put that number at no less than 10 million.
somecomputerguy
Just a further note on jury nullification;
Having juries at all, doesn’t make sense without jury nullification.
Why would you take a random group of people, who are definitionally, the least qualified you could possibly put in a room, and make them sovereign?
The purpose of the jury is to be the last line of defense against the state, absolutely including acting as the ultimate remedy to unjust law.
Curt Kastens
Luigi could be an honest enough person that when he says that he was working alone, he really was working alone. But he could also be smart enough to pull off a completely incompitent escape attempt in an attempt to make it appear like he was working alone.
If that were the case it would imply that it was his plan all along to get caught. Which means that it has been his plan all along to probably go to prison for a very long time. People that committed are pretty rare. But it is fun to pretend that the call that he was on shortly before the assassination had something to do with his being in the right place at the right time.