In December, Luigi Mangione was arrested for shooting health insurance executive Brian Thompson. Last week, Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced that she was seeking the death penalty. It’s a highly unusual announcement, since Mangione hasn’t even been indicted yet on a federal level. (He has been indicted in Manhattan.) By intervening in this high-profile case, the Trump administration has made clear that it believes that CEOs are especially important people whose deaths need to be swiftly and mercilessly avenged.
Nobody is talking about taking him out back and shooting him. They’re discussing if the maximum punishment for the crime if and when found guilty should include death.
No, they’re not.
They’re not discussing what the appropriate penalties should be—which, by the way, is typically done at the end of a trial during the sentencing phase, after all evidence has been presented and a guilty verdict has been delivered, because punishment is supposed to be reflective of the evidence presented—they’re saying that they’ve already decided that the target penalty is death.
That’s a clear nod that they want to make an example, a concept divorced from justice.
Well this case absolutely looks like any other murder charge doesn’t it? And to touch on your other comment, it’s just as fair for everyone. The search for the suspect was like any other, the treatment with the media was like any other, and the federal government is holding back from intervening in a state case to poison the already tainted public before a jury can be formed just like any other case. Right?
Nothing has been proven, and there is no defense for how this person is being treated even IF he did do what is alleged. This country was founded on this principle.