since people are upset with the NYPost article…
“With today’s guilty plea, Mr. Mangione has accepted full responsibility for the death of Brian Thompson,” Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Mangione’s attorney, said during a press conference outside the courthouse.
“On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione told the court, according to The Associated Press.
With the obvious caveat that I’m not a lawyer and this is my opinion - The only way this makes any sense to me is if Luigi wants to become a martyr.
There’s no way he’s going to get any sort of leniency - he killed a wealthy person. The search, Luigi’s arrest, and the trial have all been a performative farce; an attempt to dissuade anybody else from getting the same idea. They aren’t going to stop just because he pled guilty.
They straight up say that in the article:
“Mangione attempted to send a public message through violence, but the message that emerges today is very different,” McDonald said. “Violence is not a legitimate instrument to promote any political or social message, and those who resort to violence in an effort to advance their beliefs will be prosecuted.”
“Violence is not a legitimate instrument to promote any political or social message, and those who resort to violence in an effort to advance their beliefs will be prosecuted.”
So about ICE…
“Violence is only for us to use. You peasants don’t get to use it against us.”
If we ever get our Nuremberg trials, then yes ICE.
So about our healthcare system that condemns you to death for the crime of having not only too little money for treatment, but too little money for the profit margin…
Violence is not the answer!
But also we want to seek the death penalty.
Unless they are the government, of course.
“While the defendant pled guilty, our office does not have a plea agreement with him,” the U.S. attorney said. “There are no accommodations or concessions, and we are free to seek the maximum penalty under the law.”
There wasn’t any plea deal in place, he (in consultation with his lawyers) probably figured this was the best path for him to possibly not get a life sentence. It’s as simple as that.
Whats the maximum for stalking? That’s what he plead guilty to right?
For federal stalking, up to life in prison.
The big thing with this plea though is that NY state has a double jeopardy law. If the federal case is resolved first (which it is with this plea), the NY murder case gets dropped under double jeopardy since the charges stem from the same action.
The reverse is not true though. If he went to trial and the state case progressed, he could be convicted of murder at the state level, and then still for these charges at the federal level. SCOTUS has held that charges in different jurisdictions, like state and federal, do not violate the double jeopardy clause of the constitution. Even for the exact same charges.
And if convicted at the state level and federal level, if the federal case ever got overturned on appeal, he’d just go right to state prison to start that sentence. The Feds have supremacy though so he’d go to federal prison first regardless.
This removes the state case.
What are the appeal options after a guilty plea in this instance?
I’ve seen the stalking charges described as “stalking resulting in death”, which I suppose is worse than plain old stalking but not quite murder. Regardless, he’s facing a max sentence of life. It seems like he’s taking a gamble that he will get less than that.
And as far as I can tell, he is betting they by saying “I killed him” as part of this plea in this trial, he can get out of the state trial.
If not for the provision against cruel and unusual punishments, Mangione would have absolutely gotten drawn and quartered as a form of public chastisement
