Luigi Mangione’s lawyers filed paperwork on Friday once again pushing for dismissal of his state-level case in the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson following his federal guilty plea.
Mangione pleaded guilty on 14 August to federal charges in Thompson’s grisly death outside a Manhattan hotel on 4 December 2024. The shocking plea came less than a month before his state murder and weapons trial, which had been scheduled for 8 September.
Thompson’s death spurred a sprawling search for his killer. The incident simultaneously elicited an onslaught of anger against the for-profit US healthcare industry, which has long been decried for putting their bottom line ahead of patients, to the latter’s detriment.
About an hour after Mangione admitted to two federal stalking charges, his lawyers filed paperwork to dismiss his state case. They have contended that New York state’s double jeopardy laws bar him from being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney.
Double-jeopardy protection under the US constitution does not bar state prosecution for the same crimes as a federal case, and vice-versa. However, New York state statute maintains that “a person may not be twice prosecuted for the same offense” and “a person may not be separately prosecuted for two offenses based upon the same act or criminal transaction”.
If I was elected president, I would pardon him.
Not until the state charges are dropped. Then, yeah, openly declare the health insurance industry a clear and present danger to the health and safety of all Americans, extend Medicare to all, pardon Luigi, and declare hunting season on everyone with more than $10 million in registered securities, no bag limit.
Dropped with prejudice (preventing them from being restarted) or else dropping the federal case means they can just go ahead again.
(either way he’s probably better off in state court than federal)
That part in particular might be going a bit too far.
Not because I’m worried about the billionaires – I’m just worried about false positives. Cases of mistaken identity, cases of people hunting anyone who ‘looks rich’ even if they’re actually not… Vigilantism really does have serious possible downsides, and those possibilities become certainties when you do it at scale. Innocent, non-millionaire people would die because of this, no question.
Yeah, you’re probably right.
Still, we can tax excess securities. Natural persons can have up to $10 million in securities. We’ll apply an annual 1% tax on everything above. We’ll take an equal percentage of each issue in their portfolio to cover that tax. No selling shares, no liquidation issues. Just take the necessary shares themselves. Transfer them to the IRS who can appoint a liquidator to sell those shares slowly over time, such that no more than 1% of total traded volume of any issue is ever comprised of tax shares.
Doesn’t that just punish people for participating in the publicly traded stock market though which has requirements for audit and financial reporting? That ignores private equity membership interests which have practically zero transparency and would effectively be protected under a proposal to only go after public security holdings.
If you can call billionaires “people”, then yes. That is the express point. It only applies to the portfolios of artificial “persons”, and to that part of a natural person’s portfolio in excess of $10 million in value.
It does not target all people. If you are a natural person and your investment portfolio is worth less than $10 million, you will not owe even a tiny fraction of a single share.
This doesn’t affect actual people. It affects the kind of people who grossly manipulate the market simply by participating in it.
It’s not just the stock market: it is all securities. All tradable financial assets. Stocks are just the easiest to see.
It is simple enough to avoid this tax: simply disperse that equity among natural persons. When you run out of family members and close friends willing to hold your billions of dollars in a shares, $10 million at a time, you can turn to your employees. Offer them ownership stakes in the business they have built for you, and the government won’t steal that interest and sell it to your competitors.
OwOarchist 2028!