Luigi Mangione charged with murder as an act of terrorism in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing

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Luigi Mangione charged with murder as an act of terrorism in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing

The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from a Pennsylvania jail.

Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thompson’s death on a midtown Manhattan street “was a killing that was intended to evoke terror. And we’ve seen that reaction.”

“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” he said at a news conference Tuesday.

“It occurred in one of the most bustling parts of our city, threatened the safety of local residents and tourists alike, commuters and businesspeople just starting out on their day.”

Luigi Mangione is seen inside a police car after leaving an extradition hearing at a courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pa.
Luigi Mangione is seen inside of a police car, following an extradition hearing at a courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pa., last week. (Matthew Hatcher/Reuters)

Mangione’s New York lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to comment.

Thompson, 50, was shot dead while walking to a hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the United States’ biggest medical insurer — was holding an investor conference.

The killing kindled a fiery outpouring of resentment toward U.S. health insurance companies, as Americans swapped stories online and elsewhere of being denied coverage, left in limbo as doctors and insurers disagreed, and stuck with sizeable bills.

The shooting has also rattled C-suites, as “wanted” posters with other health-care executives’ names and faces appeared on New York streets and some social media users extolled Mangione’s deed as payback.

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Tuesday that “any attempt to rationalize this is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice.”

WATCH | ‘We don’t celebrate murders,’ says NYPD commissioner: 

‘We don’t celebrate murders,’ says NYPD commissioner after Mangione indicted

9 hours ago

Duration 0:20

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch called any attempt to rationalize Luigi Mangione’s alleged actions ‘vile’ and ‘reckless.’ Her comments came at a press conference on Tuesday announcing Mangione’s indictment for murder in the killing of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson.

Post-9/11 law

A New York law passed after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 allows prosecutors to charge crimes as acts of terrorism when they’re “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”

Prosecutors have used the statute in a variety of contexts. Some related to international extremism, but the law was first used against a Bronx gang member after a hail of gunfire killed a 10-year-old girl and paralyzed a man outside a christening party in 2002. The state’s highest court later said the conduct didn’t amount to terrorism, and a retrial produced convictions on other charges.

Thompson’s killing, Bragg noted, happened early on a workday in an area frequented by commuters, businesspeople and tourists.

“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” the district attorney said.

Arrested at a McDonald’s

After days of intense police searches and publicity, Mangione was spotted Dec. 9 at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., and arrested. New York police officials have said Mangione was carrying the gun used in Thompson’s killing, a passport and various fake IDs, including the one that the suspected shooter presented to check into a New York hostel.

WATCH | Social media’s spotlight on Luigi Mangione: 

Why is Luigi Mangione being glorified on social media? | Canada Tonight

6 days ago

Duration 6:07

The suspected killer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Luigi Mangione has been receiving a startling amount of online praise recently. David Gilbert, a reporter at Wired, discusses what he’s seen online and why some might be glorifying Mangione.

The 26-year-old was charged with Pennsylvania gun and forgery offences and locked up there without bail. His Pennsylvania lawyer has questioned the evidence for the forgery charge and the legal grounding for the gun charge. The lawyer also has said Mangione would fight extradition to New York.

Mangione has two court hearings scheduled for Thursday in Pennsylvania, including an extradition hearing, Bragg noted.

Hours after his arrest, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed paperwork charging him with murder and other offences. The indictment builds on that paperwork.

Investigators’ working theory is that Mangione, an Ivy League computer science grad from a prominent Maryland family, was propelled by anger at the U.S. health-care system. A law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press week said that when arrested, he was carrying a handwritten letter that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed.

Mangione repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if told they just had to live with it.

In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with a back problem to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say the pain made it impossible to work.

“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”

He was never a UnitedHealthcare client, according to the insurer.

Mangione apparently cut himself off from his family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing in San Francisco in November.

After San Francisco authorities got a tip to their New York counterparts, investigators spoke to Mangione’s mother in San Francisco late on Dec. 7. In that interview, “she said it might be something that she could see him doing,” New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Tuesday.

Before the case detectives could follow up on that lead, Mangione was arrested, Kenny said.

Mangione’s relatives have said in a statement that they were “shocked and devastated” by his arrest.

Thompson, who grew up on a farm in small-town Iowa, was trained as an accountant. A married father of two high-schoolers, he had worked at the giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.

Published at Sun, 15 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Judge allows testing of George Floyd tissue samples as officer seeks new trial on civil rights conviction

A judge has granted permission to Derek Chauvin’s lawyers to have tissue samples from George Floyd’s body examined. It’s part of the former Minneapolis police officer’s efforts to challenge his federal conviction of violating Floyd’s civil rights after he was also convicted in Floyd’s 2020 killing

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted the order Monday, agreeing to let the defence examine Floyd’s heart tissue and fluid samples. This will be done to test a theory that Floyd died of a heart condition aggravated by a rare tumour, not — as prosecutors contend — from asphyxiation caused by the white officer pressing his knee on the Black man’s neck for nine-and-a-half minutes in May 2020. 

Chauvin’s federal defender for his appeal attempt, Robert Meyers, argued that Chauvin’s original attorney, Eric Nelson, failed to inform his client that an outside pathologist not directly involved in the case, Dr. William Schaetzel, had contacted Nelson before Chauvin entered his plea and offered an unsolicited theory that Chauvin did not cause Floyd’s death.

Chauvin claims that amounted to “ineffective assistance counsel” and is seeking a new trial, saying he would not have pleaded guilty if he had known about the pathologist.

But federal prosecutors have argued in court filings that Nelson made a reasonable “tactical decision” not to explore an untested opinion “offered by someone holding himself out as an expert.”

A white man in a grey suit and white dress shirt addresses a court.
Chauvin addresses the court at the Hennepin County Courthouse on June 25, 2021, the day he was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder of George Floyd. (AP)

Supreme Court rejected appeal of murder conviction

They pointed out that Nelson consulted with other medical experts in preparation for Chauvin’s cases, including one who testified in state court, but that the jury in that case rejected Chauvin’s medical defence. Federal prosecutors also noted that the legal barriers to succeeding on a claim of ineffective counsel are very high.

Nelson declined to comment Tuesday.

Chauvin was convicted in state court on murder charges in 2021 and pleaded guilty later that year in federal court to violating Floyd’s civil rights. He’s currently serving his 20-year federal civil rights and 22-and-a-half-year murder sentences concurrently at a federal prison in Texas.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his murder conviction last year.

Floyd’s death and his dying cries of “I can’t breathe” ignited protests worldwide — some of which turned violent — and forced a reckoning over police brutality and racism.

Published at Wed, 18 Dec 2024 01:44:40 +0000

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