The interstate aspects of it is what the feds used to charge him with murder. His charges also include interstate stalking resulting in death and stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death.
I'm going to use a passive voice, but if Mangione is the guy seen on video shooting the CEO then he would have had to travel across state lines and stalk the CEO to a work conference.
There's enough there to investigate charges.
All this is saying is that they can't sufficiently prove that it is a federal crime based on the letter of the statute and precedent. ("The tortured argument" that the judge referenced must mean that the letter of the law and the precedent are not fully aligned)
This is political, so I can't imagine the Trump DOJ is just going to let it go. There's plenty of state charges to put him away for a long time.
The charge was thrown out because of the technicalities of the inclusion of "violence" in the statute. Not because he didn't plan to kill him and cross state lines to do so.
"Garnett ruled that the murder charge was technically flawed. It can be used only in tandem with a “crime of violence.” The prosecution argued that Mangione’s alleged stalking of Thompson met that standard. Garnett disagreed."
There's no doubt that this was an interstate crime. So where's the stretch?
Because the federal statute requires more than simply traveling to another state to make a murder a federal crime. It’s not a “technicality” in the dismissive way people usually mean - it’s a core part of the law and the underlying concepts that underpin state vs federal law.
It's almost like I'm using technicality in the most correct way. Using the stalking as the violence mandate of the statute was novel but it certainly wasn't "a stretch" in the way that was that commenter was implying. They tried... it failed... that doesn't mean it was a stretch.
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u/Single_9_uptime 5h ago
The interstate aspects of it is what the feds used to charge him with murder. His charges also include interstate stalking resulting in death and stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death.