Things are still up in the air and evolving quickly, so it will be fun to see how this ages several months from now. In any case, here is a quick overview of the process that Luigi Mangione is currently living through.
- He has legal representation, as is his right.
- He has presumption of innocence.
- He has had numerous pretrial hearings, in order to ensure (among other things) that his 4th Amendment rights have not been violated. These hearings include:
- Mapp hearing, in which the defense moved to suppress certain physical evidence based on potential Fourth Amendment issues.
- Huntley hearing, in which the defense moved to suppress certain statements made by Mangione on the basis that he made them prior to receiving Miranda warnings.
- Conditions of Courtroom Appearance hearings, in which the defense sought to allow Mangione to wear civilian clothing to trial rather than a prison uniform, and that he be unshackled during trial.
- There will be a jury selection process in which Mangione’s lawyers will have a hand in picking the jurors that will decide his innocence or guilt (voir dire).
- The judge makes rulings about what evidence the jury is allowed to hear. For example, evidence against Mangione that may be relevant to the trial may nevertheless be excluded if it is ruled that the prejudicial nature of the evidence outweighs its probative value.
- Once the trial begins, Mangione’s lawyers will be present at every stage in order to ensure that his rights are protected.
- The prosecution will not be allowed to talk to the judge or the jury without Mangione’s lawyers present (ex parte communication)
- Mangione will have the right to access all evidence against him so that his lawyers may prepare a defense (discovery), and prosecutors are legally required to hand over any evidence they find that might prove his innocence or undermine their own witnesses (Brady material).
- Mangione will have the right to have all witnesses against him cross-examined by his legal team.
- Mangione will have the right to call his own witnesses and experts.
- Mangione will have the right not to take the stand, or in any way incriminate himself.
- When the time comes, the jury will have to render a unanimous verdict in order to convict him.
- In order to convict, they will all have to unanimously agree that the evidence meets the Reasonable Doubt standard.
- If a conviction is rendered, he will have a right to an appeal.
Some of this process has already worked in Mangione’s favor. In the Federal case, the judge dismissed the federal capital firearms charges, which meant that prosecutors could not seek the death penalty. In the state case, the judge ruled that certain items from the backpack (e.g. a gun magazine, cellphone, passport, wallet) were inadmissible because the bag was not in his immediate reach when he was initially detained. The judge also ruled that certain statements made by Mangione are inadmissible because they were given before he was properly Mirandized.
There’s also an interesting new development whereby the defense may seek an open plea (basically a guilty plea with no deal) in the Federal case. It would almost certainly mean he serves prison time, but if this happens before the jury is impaneled in the State case, it may effectively kill the state case, because New York state (essentially) has stricter double jeopardy laws than the Federal government.
These rules are pretty good, right? Because I think Mangione probably did it, but I don’t think we should be throwing people in prison for decades unless we can prove that they are guilty without violating their civil rights. That’s pretty much common sense, right?
So explain this to me. If you’re someone who thinks that what Mangione allegedly did was good, how do you justify the extrajudicial execution of Brian Thompson, which followed none of these guardrails?
I look over these guardrails and I imagine that some of them must have been learned the hard way. Like a warning label on a baby stroller that says “Remove child before folding.” For example, the rules against ex parte communication — which disallow a judge from meeting with either the defense or prosecution without the other party present — seem like “well, no shit.” Imagine being a defendant and learning that the prosecution met behind closed doors with the judge. Why not give them exclusive access to the jury while you’re at it? Alas, apparently this rule was not codified in the United States until the 20th century.
What strikes me about these guardrails is that they’re mostly about protecting the defendant’s constitutional rights, maintaining trust in the process, and ascertaining guilt to a high degree of certainty. Which is to say, you probably can’t know whether someone is guilty with any certainty unless the case against them has gone through a similar gauntlet. If the evidence hasn’t been tested for probative value, if experts haven’t been cross-examined, if we didn’t require jury unanimity or have a standard of Reasonable Doubt, then the likelihood of punishing the wrong guy seems unacceptably high. I would be pretty nervous about living in a society in which this type of justice was the norm.
However, the ethicists and political scientists of TikTok, Twitter, and Reddit have identified several holes in my argument. Let’s consider them one by one.
Through his actions, Brian Thompson is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people; who cares if he’s given “due process”?
How do we know this is true if we haven’t examined the evidence using sound methods and procedures to ensure fairness? Again, the point of the trial is to ascertain guilt in the first place. As far as I can tell, the evidence for this charge so far consists of a vault of viral tweets. Even if we had scientific studies demonstrating the claim (which we don’t), we’d still need to allow the defense a chance to provide their own data, cross-examine prosecution experts, and then have a jury weigh that and render a verdict. Could the charge be true? Maybe. But without something resembling good evidence and a fair trial, the argument is circular.
The system is never going to punish a guy like Brian Thompson, so we should take matters into our own hands.
This is really only true if we can prove Thompson’s guilt in the first place, and so again we’re begging the question. Also, if the system is unfair, then the correct answer is to change the system. Even in an extreme situation in which violence were warranted, it would need to be directed at the goal of changing the system. The solution is obviously not to adjudicate individual cases, decide for ourselves where the system fucked up, and then start shooting people.
Mangione’s actions likely saved lives.
So would killing healthy people and harvesting their organs until the donor waiting lists are cleared out. You could probably save 5 lives every time you do this. Fortunately, we do not make ethical decisions based solely on “net lives saved”. Incidentally, the premise is probably false; there’s no good evidence that shooting Brian Thompson saved any lives. Also, Jeremy Bentham wants you off his debate team.
If you can’t look at the deluge of heartbreaking stories about people with life-threatening conditions who have been put through a meat grinder dealing with insurance companies, and aren’t moved to support Mangione, then you’re a cold person.
I am very much moved by these stories. I want to do something about them (I am planning another post soon that will detail exactly what). But I don’t see how Mangione’s actions helped the situation at all.
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If you want some further reading from actual ethicists, I can recommend the following two articles. Being ethicists, they both argue from a different tack than I did. I am not aware of any other ethicists who have opined on the topic. If you are aware of any, for or against, feel free to let me know.
https://dailynous.com/2024/12/15/complications-ethics-killing-health-insurance-ceo
FrankThoughts 
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