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As Luigi Mangione’s lawyers head to court, support grows for the accused ‘vigilante’
A mural of Luigi Mangione, who is charged with killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in 2024 in New York, was painted in the Bethnal Green area of London, England. Prosecutors describe Mangione as a ruthless murderer, but the 28-year-old has also drawn support and praise around the world.
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Leon Neal/Getty Images
NEW YORK — As Luigi Mangione’s team of attorneys heads back to state court in Manhattan this week for a key pretrial hearing, public support for the 28-year-old continues to grow.
Some legal experts say Mangione’s populist appeal, fueled in part by what many describe as his Instagram-ready good looks, could complicate state and federal trials.
“The concern you have as a prosecutor is that public support is going to make it into the jury room,” said Richard Schoenstein, a legal analyst and defense attorney.
Mangione is accused of stalking and murdering Brian Thompson, age 50, a health insurance executive and father of two, on a Manhattan street in 2024. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
His crowd-sourced legal defense fund now tops $1.5 million, with more than 42,000 donors. According to a pro-Mangione website created by volunteers, he has also received nearly 7,000 personal letters from dozens of countries around the world.
Gary Galperin, a former assistant district attorney in New York County who teaches at Cardozo School of Law, agrees jury selection will be challenging because of Mangione’s popularity.
“You may come to find that one or more jurors who seemed [unbiased] harbor views that could derail the deliberations,” he said.
A CEO’s killing, the rise of a folk hero
Supporters of Luigi Mangione raise signs outside Manhattan federal court on Jan. 9 in New York.
Yuki Iwamura/AP
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Yuki Iwamura/AP
Another risk, say Schoenstein, Galperin and others, is that some jurors could come to see Mangione’s state and federal trials as a referendum on the costly, frustrating and often inaccessible U.S. healthcare system.
According to federal prosecutors, a notebook kept by Mangione “contained several handwritten pages that express hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular.”
Mangione’s writings allegedly included a plan to “wack” an insurance company CEO.
Schoenstein thinks many Mangione supporters are so outraged by U.S. healthcare that they view his alleged violence as a legitimate political statement.
“There definitely are people out there who assume this defendant committed the crime, but support him in doing so,” he said.
Evan Clarkson, an assistant professor at Utah Valley University who has studied the phenomenon of Mangione’s popular support, says he began his research after many of his students told him they felt “conflicted” about Mangione’s alleged crimes.
“There are some students who believe he is absolutely a justified vigilante … against this system, the American healthcare system, that they think is unjust.”
Clarkson and other experts think Mangione’s political appeal is being further fueled by the fact that he’s young and photogenic.
Images of Mangione shirtless have gone viral on social media platforms. His fans have written poetry and songs about him and flooded the prison where he’s detained with photographs.
Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, attends a court hearing on May 18 to rule on the admissibility of evidence and setting of trial date in New York.
Jeenah Moon/pool photo/AFP via Getty Images
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Jeenah Moon/pool photo/AFP via Getty Images
“He’s hot — and our [research] paper does talk about the role of his physical attractiveness,” Clarkson said, noting that views expressed about Mangione’s appearance are a “powerful predictor of people’s attitudes about him.”
Daniel Byman, an expert on domestic political violence in the U.S. at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agrees Mangione’s physical appearance is a significant factor.
He compares Mangione’s relatively broad cultural support to that of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
“Che Guevara was a very bloody revolutionary and yet his poster was on dorm room walls,” Byman said. “Mangione [like Guevara] is a good-looking guy.”
Mangione’s legal team declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a statement posted on a website they created to communicate with supporters, his attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, rejected the idea that her client espoused political violence.
State trial scheduled to begin in September
In a separate statement, Mangione himself, currently behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, acknowledged the personal connection many of his supporters feel.
Luigi Mangione, a suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is escorted by police on Dec. 19, 2024, in New York.
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Pamela Smith/AP
“I am overwhelmed by — and grateful for — everyone who has written me to share their stories and express their support,” Mangione said in the undated post.
It’s unclear how the political and cultural currents surrounding Mangione will play out in court.
His team has won significant legal victories. Last September, a state judge tossed out terrorism charges filed against Mangione. Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that Mangione won’t face the death penalty.
But prosecutors have also won key rulings, including a decision last month by state Judge Gregory Carro to allow crucial pieces of evidence to be presented at trial.
“I found that ruling, at the end of the day, to be a compelling win for the prosecutors,” said Schoenstein, the legal analyst. “The gun, the silencer and the notebook [which allegedly belonged to Mangione] are all coming into evidence. It seems like a very strong case for the prosecution.”
The state trial is scheduled to begin in early September, with the federal trial delayed to next year. In a comment left online, while donating $5,000 to Mangione’s legal fund, one supporter made it clear they see the upcoming trials as political persecution.
“I am disturbed by what the government is doing to you,” the donor wrote. “For them, it was and always will be about protecting the 1%. Head up, Luigi. We are right here with you.”
If found guilty on the remaining charges, Mangione could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.
to “indirect assistance” or “permissible direct assistance.” Among these, most notably, are statutes dealing with transnational organized crime and international counterdrug efforts.
3. The Insurrection Act
A. Statutory Provisions
The most far-reaching legal exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, though, fall within the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act, 10 U.S.C. §§251-255, originally enacted in 1807, is a statute that, when invoked, provides the President with extraordinary powers to use the military in several distinct domestic contexts, if the President first “by proclamation” orders “the insurgents to disperse”:
First, in the event of an insurrection in any state against its government, the President, at the request of a state legislature or governor, can use the military to suppress the insurrection. 10 U.S.C. § 251.
Second, in the event that unlawful acts “make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,” the President can use the military to enforce the law and suppress the rebellion. 10 U.S.C. § 252.
Third, in the event of “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that makes enforcing the law impossible, or that results in any class of people being deprived of their rights, and which state authorities are unable or unwilling to resolve, the President can use the military to resolve the insurrection. 10 U.S.C. § 253(1).
And lastly, wherever any such “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy… opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws,” the President may use the military to resolve the insurrection. 10 U.S.C. § 253(2).
B. Implications and Usage
While § 251 is cabined by the requirement for a request from state officials, the § 252 and § 253 authorities are incredible broad, allowing for essentially unbounded use of the military in any state, with or without state consent or acquiescence, with the only predicate being a Presidential proclamation declaring that an insurrection exists.
Many Presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act throughout American history. Abraham Lincoln invoked the Insurrection Act at the outset of the Civil War (indeed, the prosecution of the Civil War can be viewed as one long deployment of the military under the Act). Ulysses S. Grant similarly invoked the Insurrection Act during his suppression of the first Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s. In the late 1800’s, the Insurrection Act was invoked on a number of occasions to deal with labor strife. And perhaps most notably in recent history, three Presidents invoked the
3
A private plane carrying skydivers crashed in the US state of Missouri on Sunday, killing all 12 people on board, authorities said.
The crash occurred near Butler Memorial Airport, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Kansas City, shortly after the plane took off. The aircraft was operated by Skydive Kansas City.
“Tragically, all 12 individuals aboard lost their lives in the accident,” the skydiving company said in a statement. The pilot was among those killed.
What do we know?
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) identified the aircraft as a single-engine Pacific Aerospace P750.
Dennis Jacobs, the acting airport manager and Bates County emergency management director, told Reuters that the plane took off at around 11:20 a.m. CT (1620 UTC).
It did not appear to gain altitude and was seen making a sharp left turn before it came down about 300 yards (274 meters) from the runway, near a highway, Jacobs said.
First responders searched the flight path to find anyone who might have tried to jump from the plane as it began to nosedive but found no evidence of that, Jacobs added.
Investigation underway in Missouri crash
The cause of the crash was not immediately known.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is leading the investigation, said investigators were expected to arrive at the scene on Monday.
A final report on the cause of the crash is expected to be published in 12 to 24 months, news agencies cited the NTSB as saying.
“For all intents and purposes, (this) appears to be an accident,” Bates County Sheriff Chad Anderson said at a news conference.
Some of the victims’ family members witnessed the crash, Anderson said.
Images from the crash site showed blue and silver wreckage strewn across the grass as multiple emergency vehicles responded to the scene.
Edited by: Wesley Dockery
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new video loaded: 12 Dead in Missouri Skydiving Plane Crash
transcript
transcript
12 Dead in Missouri Skydiving Plane Crash
Eleven passengers and a pilot were killed shortly after taking off for a skydiving trip in Missouri on Sunday.
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We’re still trying to identify family and make notifications. And so we’re going to be respectful of that. There were witnesses that were family members, yes.
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