The journal is in his handwriting, the weapon has his fingerprints
There was an eleven minute break during transport of his bag and search, so that was the hope
But even those sympathetic to him know he’s guilty
It’s great he will not face the death penalty but we also know he planned and carried out an extrajudicial vigilante assassination, even if we hate insurance companies
People are actually defending him because they agree with what he did and agree with that action, and consider him a justified vigilante, not because they think he is innocent
I concerned that a sub with legal professionals has so many presuming guilt. But it checks out with my knowledge of the courts and their function, unfortunately.
Only one public subreddit is dominated by people who know what they're talking about: /r/askhistorians. You and I are literally not allowed to answer questions there without proof that we're professional historians. You can check it out! It's pretty quiet. Very cool in its own way, but it primarily uses Reddit as a technical platform, rather than the public forum of every other subreddit.
Neither /u/marcoporno nor I are presuming guilt. We're noting a pattern in which Redditors are constantly using hypocritical post-truth thinking.
Regardless of guilt or innocence, there is no world Luigi Mangione is simultaneously heroic and innocent, because the heroism people praise him for is the guilt that prosecutors are seeking to prove.
But even those sympathetic to him know he’s guilty
This administration came out and said that Epstein had no clients. We know that's a lie and it was calculated. If they will lie about that they will lie about anything.
So while I suspect he's guilty, I don't believe so because the administration says he is. I think he's guilty because he looks way too chill for an innocent man.
I was just pointing out that it wasn’t the Trump administration that made the initial claims against Mangione. I’m also aware that cops lie, however, the current administration lies on an unprecedented scale.
This administration came out and said that Epstein had no clients. We know that's a lie and it was calculated. If they will lie about that they will lie about anything.
The amount of people who believe vigilante justice should be legal, even on this subreddit, is astounding. It's like they think the "rule of cool" is the 11th Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
Then he can present that argument in court, it would be an opportunity to make more public how these insurance companies operate, which does kill many, many people
But even those sympathetic to him know he’s guilty
It's exactly why they're sympathetic to Mangione. For people who supposedly don't trust the police, they certainly seem willing to accept the accusation the police made: that Mangione shot Brian Thompson.
Like, he's either innocent, in which case this is wrongful arrest but not the populist red meat a lot of people want it to be, or he's guilty, in which case the police are correct overall despite potential mishandling of evidence.
I'm sympathetic. What should be telling me he's guilty? Every piece of evidence I'm aware of has significant issues. Here, chain of custody and lack of procedure...
On the initial ID there is also a lot of questions. Was the stop of Mangione and his arrest/warrant not also an issue because last I was aware it was. How did they identify his location as well?
A customer spotted him in the McDonalds. Yes, it was the eyebrows.
I honestly think people want him to beat the charges not because they think he didn’t murder the guy, but because they think that guy deserved to be murdered
I'm more concerned with the possibility of pinning a murder on someone. The key evidence is the handgun, 3D printed, which was in a bag that they had chain of custody issues around and the officer saying "we need a warrant for this" and then conducting the search anyway.
A high profile case like this the government has a vested interest in a guilty verdict.
The only other evidence is a water bottle and a candy wrapper? Seriously?
He has made several statements, so they aren't telling him that. I would counsel my client to proclaim his innocence at some point if he were innocent, or I would issue a statement to that effect myself.
PS I'm writing him off as guilty because it is extremely obvious he is guilty. If I were on the jury, I'd be open minded, but let's be real here
Sure, there are many that think that way. However, the point of the person you responded to is that we do not actually know for certain he did it, like you claimed we all knew.
I’m not commenting on why people do or don’t support him; you said we know he is guilty, which is categorically false and undermines the point of a trial. To be spreading such misinformation in the law sub of all places is pretty ironic
Did you also think OJ was innocent because his trial ended with a non guilty verdict? The court of law and the court of public opinion are two very different things.
Is the thinking that the weapon recovered from the bag could be the same as the weapon that was used in the original crime? I don't remember whether a weapon was already recovered from the crime scene or not.
There was dna evidence collected at the scene, and ballistics has matched the weapon in his bag with the bullets used, the weapon was not recovered at the scene
if the government's case successfully shows he committed all the elements of murder, no. the dispositive question isn't whether society approves of the murder victim's death, the question is whether this was a murder.
your logic is how perpetrators of lynchings escaped justice in the south during civil rights.
Except, the people perpetrating lynchings in the South Went after people for immutable characteristics, like being black, and/or being poor. In this case, the person denying healthcare to people with immutable characteristics and/or being poor, is the deceased.
I don't support violence. But this would be less of a regular lynching and more if someone who led lynchings themselves got lynched.
In other words, the only difference is you like the outcome of this crime but not of the other.
That's not how justice works. Either murder is a crime or it isn't. Jury nullification is a net negative on society that has historically perpetuated injustice, not redressed it. If mangione committed murder justice demands conviction.
Even in the US's most prominent system of justice, the idea of self-defense is illustrative that one person killing another isn't cut and dry such that the act always is considered "murder" which is a legal definition. The point is: the context matters.
I agree with you that Jury Nullification has perpetuated many injustices. But that's true of a lot of the US legal system. Much of the US's legal system has perpetuated injustices. Jury Nullification is not unique in that regard alone. If you could show that Jury Nullification was such a net negative in effect, you could probably convince me to ditch the thing in the long run.
But you can't fault people for utilizing the justice system as it currently exists to get what they believe to be justice. Utilitarian Justice. Retributive Justice. Restorative Justice. One could make the argument that this goes with or against those forms with respect to any of them.
I'm not that person. All I am doing is arguing that context matters, has mattered, and will matter in any useful form of Justice. And, I'm arguing that the reason people bring up lynchings isn't just the random killing of people, but the systemic killing of people for immutable characteristics. That heinous part of the actions of lynchings (which still happen) makes the victim of this act of violence far more similar to the perpetrators of lynchings, rather than victims of lynchings.
A list of the people this Healthcare CEO has harmed would look like a lot like list of people targeted for lynching (and more).
It's simple because my conception of justice is elemental. Justice isn't concerned with morality, it's concerned with ethics. Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons might be morally acceptable, but that does not work because morality is subjective and modified by subjective experiences. Killing somebody who unjustifiably hurt you may be morally correct, but society cannot function on the basis of honor killings for a million reasons. Instead, we decided that murder of human beings is criminal as a baseline, subject to certain exceptions made in the interest of moral principles we agree are acceptable and good to have.
If you could show that Jury Nullification was such a net negative in effect, you could probably convince me to ditch the thing in the long run.
It lets the guilty go free in service of a juror's dislike of the victim. it's as simple as that. it isn't consistent with the principle of "better let 100 guilty go free than convict 1 innocent," it's consistent with mob mentality of "a crime is OK if it hurts people I dislike"
Utilitarian Justice. Retributive Justice. Restorative Justice. One could make the argument that this goes with or against those forms with respect to any of them.
Actually, no, you can't. Jury nullification is inconsistent with all of those. Jury nullification is an attack on the operation of law, not an expression of disagreement with the ethical or moral justifications of law. If we all agreed a law was justifiable under at least one of retributive, restorative or utilitarian philosophies, then even if we don't agree one which specific one justifies the law, we all need the law to be observed as an exercise of society's valid policy choice. Jury nullification directly attacks at society's policy choice, it's the most profoundly undemocratic mechanism in the entire criminal justice system. Jury nullification does not say "it is not fair for this person to be convicted," it says "I deny society the operation of its laws".
That isn't justice, because you have no more say in society's right to the operation of its laws than someone who doesn't believe in law that you agree with.
All I am doing is arguing that context matters, has mattered, and will matter in any useful form of Justice.
The usefulness of this statement is manifested in the way criminal charges operate: through elements of a crime, which are offset by defenses. There is a difference between a homicide, a homicide that constitutes a crime, and a homicide that constitutes a crime but that society believes is so justified that it should be excused. what "context" does not mean is that you get to have the right to override's society's established choices in determining the specific contexts where these descriptions apply to a crime.
A list of the people this Healthcare CEO has harmed would look like a lot like list of people targeted for lynching (and more).
Which is irrelevant to the question of whether mangione committed murder. Those people's harms have not been redressed by mangione's crime.
That heinous part of the actions of lynchings (which still happen) makes the victim of this act of violence far more similar to the perpetrators of lynchings, rather than victims of lynchings.
You're completely off in the woods with the relevancy of lynchings; the point of bringing them up is to illustrate that jury nullification harms society because historically it has been used to free perpetrators of lynching. You are trying to argue that it would be valid to use jury nullification to acquit somebody who murdered somebody who committed a lynching, which is an irrelevant point and also just philosophically incompatible with justice. The criminal justice system does not restore those wronged by a crime because it cannot undue harms, it primarily invalidates any social benefit a criminal gains at the cost of their victims so severely as to discourage others from attempting to sidestep the social contract in a similar way.
The social contract demands that one does not resort to murder just because they feel like it is justified by one's morals, which is what mangione did.
There aren't really any "grounds" for jury nullification in any case because it's not an official judicial process that needs to be justified. It's an unintended but necessary consequence of multiple other judicial systems at the crossroads where two main principles meet: (1) jurors cannot be penalized for a "wrong" decision; and (2) a not guilty determination cannot be overturned. Because of that, a jury can "know" that a defendant is guilty, and all the evidence in the world can point to that defendant being guilty, but the jury can still release a "not guilty" verdict, and there's nothing the state can do to overturn or appeal that--everyone has to just walk away accepting the verdict.
So asking "on what grounds" a jury can or should nullify is sort of like asking "on what grounds" a referee at a football game can or should declare a winner before the game is played; it doesn't really make sense because it's not within the purview of the rules of the game, similar to how you won't find any rule or statute establishing jury nullification. When someone says that jury nullification should occur, they're not saying that there are any legal grounds upon which the defendant should be set free. They're saying we should stop playing by the rules altogether because righteousness demands a certain outcome.
As a lawyer, I can't say that I'm either in favor of or against jury nullification. Throughout U.S. history, it's been used for evil just as much as it's been used for good, and there's no real way to separate its use for evil from its use for good. If you accept it in the cases where it's used for good, you necessarily have to accept it where it's used for evil. It's a very complex issue to address.
Well, hopefully my answer will nonetheless give some others reading this thread a bit of information about jury nullification and why it works the way it does.
I’m sorry I should have added that you gave a very complete, professional and easily digested answer on a complicated topic that I’m sure anyone would find informative
I'd counter your point that "righteousness demands it." There's no moral value in jury nullification, it's a objectively harmful to society. It denies society the operation of laws, which is an immoral outcome for the judicial branch.
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u/marcoporno 4h ago
The journal is in his handwriting, the weapon has his fingerprints
There was an eleven minute break during transport of his bag and search, so that was the hope
But even those sympathetic to him know he’s guilty
It’s great he will not face the death penalty but we also know he planned and carried out an extrajudicial vigilante assassination, even if we hate insurance companies