I talked to someone personally who at some point had committed a series of crimes, and at some point they started doing things that were more and more likely to get them caught; they told me they thought to themselves, "What am I doing?" But they didn't stop, and eventually got caught.
In a different story, a few years ago I dropped my wallet on the sidewalk outside my house, and someone picked it up and tried to use one of the credit cards in it. Then they got in a fight which got them arrested; and the police found my wallet (with my ID and everything) in their possession. Why get in a fight that's going to get you arrested just at the moment when you have stolen property in your pocket?
My take is this: We present to others, and even ourselves, the illusion that there's just one unified "self"; but really inside there are a number of independent motivations within us. In both cases above, I think there was a part of those people who felt guilty and actually did want to be caught and punished.
It's possible there was something similar going on with the guy who shot the CEO: one part of him had managed to plan everything perfectly so that he could get away; but there was a saboteur. It couldn't ahead of time prevent him from doing the shooting, but it could afterwards prevent him from disposing of the evidence and ensure that he got caught.
I have a different take. Assuming his crime is driven by his beliefs/mission, not being found will not further it. Logically you may argue that it would afford him more chances to carry on but given that we assume him to be driven by strong and passionate belief, he would want to be clearly and explicitly recognized for those beliefs and would want those thoughts to take center stage of public opinion. Carrying evidence also is his way of broadcasting the signal that he doesn't care about getting caught since he did the right thing and has nothing to be ashamed of.
I'm not so sure in this case. It would have been hard for the perpetrator to predict beforehand, but there was so little public sympathy for the victim, and there are lot of people who said they would not help the police catch him. Him getting away would have shown that insurance companies are so terrible and so hated that the public is OK with the murder of those responsible (because if they weren't, they'd help the police and he'd be caught).
Escape would have sent a much stronger message than whatever he could hope to accomplish by grandstanding in a courtroom.
That is already proven to a large extent. Sure police are doing their job because of the pressure they have and someone working at McDonald's wants to collect tens of thousands of dollars, but it is pretty clear that he has significant public support based on the outpouring of support in the recent days.
> Escape would have sent a much stronger message
No, escape would have just shown that he is good at hiding. Effectively giving himself up gave an even bigger stage for him to place his point. And he got a lot more coverage by delaying that instead of immediate surrender.
> than whatever he could hope to accomplish by grandstanding in a courtroom.
What is grandstanding for you could be advocacy for another. Only time can tell whether it accomplishes anything.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I know I am not doing my body and health a favor. There's a tool called journaling, but I am not even using it right now. It's a very useful tool to get your mind into thinking "wait, this doesn't make sense", or "why am I behaving this way?"
Everyday, I say to myself that I am speeding up my decline in health, and yet nothing changes(because I don't journal).
Eric Berne in one of the pop psy books makes a claim which to me rings true -- that the real criminals don't get caught, the ones that get caught are the ones that want to play hide & seek as a trauma response from childhood -- there's a very deep drive to be sought after and found and those people, because of absent parents and lack of attention didn't get to play it out, so they really do want to be discovered in their sub-conscious mind.
It’s typically asked about. If you know about it and lie, that’s perjury.
As for "lying" here, it's an interesting metaphysical question. Because you're not lying (or telling the truth) about some observable event, it's simply your own state of mind. If somebody asks "Why did you vote not guilty", you simply say "I didn't believe the evidence was convincing". There is literally no way for anyone else to say otherwise.
Nullification needs to be unanimous. You'd get in trouble when pitching nullification to your fellow jurors. (Or at the very least, have a mistrial declared.)
> people aren't excluded (at least by the judge) for just knowing what the concept is
If you want a surefire way to get off a jury, mention nullification in voir dire. (Hell, just ask innocently about it.)
Nullification absolutely does not need to be unanimous, and it rarely is. All it takes is one juror force a mistrial (and another if it is retried, etc.) Sure, the prosecutor would likely retry, but again, it just takes one juror out of twelve to cause a mistrial, and the vast majority of prosecutors don't prosecute indefinitely.
> If you want a surefire way to get off a jury, mention nullification in voir dire.
No shit, so don't mention it.
...this isn't nullification. A major point of nullification is a not-guilty verdict by a jury is final. No retrial. No appeal.
> the vast majority of prosecutors don't prosecute indefinitely
You think this case wouldn't be re-tried?
I do. The educated, well-to-do, urban bubble has convinced itself—again—that this guy is universally adored. Because we’re mistaking—again—the difference between a symbol and the object, a mistake amplified by those who get their world view primarily from Twitter, Reddit, et cetera.
Jury nullification wouldn't have mattered and it was settled in an hour, but it was interesting. But I had been warned by multiple lawyer friends this might happen.
Even more wasteful as this was the 3rd strike so the difference between assault and aggravated was 25 or 26 years, aka no difference. And the defendant had pleaded down already. Finally it was obvious it wasn't aggravated for several reasons and the prosecution was just fishing for convictions. Basically took 2 extra days of everyone's time fishing for sentence elevations.
Why is that? Was it just the sentencing phase?
how do I know this? the defense attorney and the prosecutor both went to bars in my neighborhood. I got both of them drinks and asked them for the back story on the case.
Also, IIRC, the court system is pretty against it. The judge won't instruct the jury on it and I very much doubt he'd let the defense attorney bring it up to the jury either.
Jury selection throws a wrench in the system, lawyers have a chance to ask questions under oath and get rid of jurors for most any reason. As i understand it, its pretty common for them to try to ferret out anyone that may go the nullification route.
Is it also legal for jurors to ignore orders not to discuss the case, post about deliberations on Facebook, or decide the case based on race?
Orders and instructions are different though. An official order by a judge may fall under contempt of court if you don't comply. Instructions are more procedural and about a judge running the process of the trial. For deliberation, that also generally means instructions that really just help guide a jury of people who may not have done it before and aren't sure of the process or general expectations.
The issue is that proving why a juror voted a certain way is kind of tough. The beautiful part is that this is a feature, not a bug.
Its interesting you meant that rhetorically, your premise is wrong in my opinion. If you want to distinguish between an instruction and an order I'd think it has to be based on how it can be enforced. An instruction can't be enforced by a judge, for example they can instruct you to only consider what was presented but they can't punish you if you disobey that.
Judges will be careful not to directly give instructions against nullification for precisely that reason. They may very well imply that you shouldn't go off the rails of evidence provided or laws and precedent as described, but that's as far as a judge can go with instructions against nullification.
In extremely high profile cases like the ones featuring Donald Trump, courts focus on selecting jurors who can remain fair and impartial despite their knowledge of the case or their own personal opinions. They'll go through extensive vetting which can include written questionnaires, interviews, oral questioning about their media consumption, their political beliefs and potential biases, and so on.
That said its a very far leap to assume (either as the suspect or as a third party) that because this suspect has a lot of online sympathy that that will translate to a jury both willing and knowledgeable enough to nullify. Certainly wouldn't bet my life or freedom on that myself.
Personally I lean toward doubting that getting caught was part of some master plan. People have this binary view of things where he's either got to be a criminal mastermind who thought of everything or a complete fool, and the reality is probably that he's a better than average premeditated murderer (given all of what is stacked against him) who still got caught due to a combination of bad luck and being a little bit careless. Considering how extensive the current surveillance state is he got closer to getting away with it than the vast majority of people would have, but also combined that with some stupid but perfectly naturally human oversights.
I’d guess at least 1 in ten thousand per annum. Which would equate to hundreds of newly deranged developers per year in the US.
And boy howdy, the sparks will fly then
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-allan-poe/short-fict...
I’m not saying it’s not exactly what it looks like, just kinda makes me think huh. Either the perp really wanted to be caught, or someone really wants to close this case. I’m going with he wanted to be caught, since he’s apparently not an actual idiot.
So just a relatively smart privileged dude swept away by dark ideology? It wouldn’t be the first time. If there’s any more to it, we won’t likely know.
He "became quiet and started to shake" when asked if he had recently been to New York, according to the criminal complaint filed in Pennsylvania.
Being smart can lead to arrogance, which leads to stumbles. like carrying evidence, dining in public, etc.
Bodies of water are popular for disposing of things, because it's a huge PITA to find things there. Imagine how hard it might be in a large local pond, and then multiply that in complexity for a rather big river. Or an inland sea like the Great Lakes. Don't even multiply for those; it's a stupidly big irrelevant number.
He totally did. Find a trash can, and put it in (though maybe disassemble the gun first, and dispose of it in pieces in multiple locations).
Why you'd eat-in at a fast food place rather than just go via some low level Chinese takeaway though!
Exactly. A gun, even without ammo, still allows you to get out of hairy situations: steal a car, force someone to drive you somewhere, etc
>Why you'd eat-in at a fast food place rather than just go via some low level Chinese takeaway though!
Maybe he though he'd be more anonymous in a major fast food chain, and you stand out more in a Chinese place.
That's not this guy.
What are the magic words? I don’t know them, but I know that the lawyers who work for police unions know them and the trainers who train police officers drill those into the heads of officers.
The core problem with the jurisprudence: if a reasonable officer had a fear for themself or for members of the public, then fatal shootings in the line of duty are usually justified. The objective facts at the scene don’t matter; only the officer’s perception. If only all citizens were given the same rights…
Did you not understand my post, or do you not believe my claim?
The objective facts (as established by a body cam) matter very little, only a good faith belief that “I feared for my life or the life of someone in the public”.
Why? The burden of proof is “Innocent until proven guilty” and like I said, the onus is on the prosecution to prove that the officer’s statement that “they feared for their life” was a lie at the time of the incident. That’s extremely difficult to prove, especially when an officer has been on the job for a while and has been conditioned to use the right words to CYA.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/search-new-york-subway-gunm...
Wife is a GP doctor, maybe 1/3rd of her patients have some form of this.
Can you really not think of anyone where it would be better if they were... not there anymore?
2. This guy has a terminal illness.
3. This guy is bankrupt after healthcare debt + buying backpacks.
I've stayed at that place multiple times, though years ago.
They did check ID, but never copied it.
I wonder how they knew it was fake.
They recorded name on reservation and maybe DOB.
The place had cameras everywhere apart from inside rooms and bathrooms.
I can't believe that was the only time they got him on camera.
>They recorded name on reservation and maybe DOB.
I'm sure the cops can run the same name/DOB combination through the databases of all 50 states + DC, and rule out any that don't match the surveillance footage.
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian...
“I was informed... that defendant presented a forged New Jersey Driver’s License with the name of Mark Rosario as his identification, which based on the number on it was the same identification defendant presented at the hostel,"
So the hostel saved at least the number.
This was not the case at least 2 years ago. I'm absolutely certain.
The hostel had none. They never copied it.
They never wrote ID numbers either.
They checked the name and that was it.
Unless it changed in the last year or so.
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian...
I assumed he had some help with the timing via the burner phone
But this all looks very lone wolfish now
If real, he scheduled a post to be released everyday at ~6pm EST. If he wasn't caught that day he would delete the scheduled post, and reschedule for the next day at 6pm.
I say 6 because it was the earliest snapshot of the site. Looks like the post just got taken down off sub stack and I can't view the exact time of post.
That's likely how it happened
You might know about their public appearances such as for shareholder meetings but how would you know which hotel they're staying at and that they would leave said hotel at 6:45 AM(!) and walk(!!) to the meeting venue?
Either massive luck on the shooter's side or there is a source of information that hasn't been discovered yet.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unso...
all of those you are referring to are not plastered 24/7 over all media world-wide
He was presumably en route somewhere. Disposing of a fake ID such that forensics can’t get anything useful off it isn’t easily done on the run / incognito. (And if his inspiration is the Unabomber, he presumably had more targets.)
You're going to take time away from your actual escape to make yourself less incriminating in case you are caught? Should he have been grinding up IDs at the Greyhound bus terminal in New York? Right after the whole city heard about the shooting? Or should he have waited until after the FBI plastered the nation with his face?
> if you owned a pair of scissors or a lighter or something
Scissors won't take care of fingerprints, let alone DNA. As for the lighter, again, where do you propose he do this without attracting attention?
Actually, I could see him having thought this would be easy to do, maybe even packing a lighter and scissors, only to realise in execution that you can't start burning IDs on a bus without someone noticing.
You can just deface it in any way and throw it out the window on a highway or into any trash can and it will quite literally never be found.
No. But you don't know how far behind they are when you dispose of it. It only becomes random plastic after they've lost your trail.
> can just deface it in any way and throw it out the window on a highway or into any trash can
Sure. Or you can keep it until it can be safely disposed of. Which carries fewer risks? We don't even have to hypothesise, we know for a fact that the IDs on his person didn't cause him to get caught. We also know him not having the IDs on him wouldn't have caused him to be less caught.
Now I'm not a valedictorian, but I'd like to think I could achieve that.
Trial for this could be hugely publicized
I wonder if cops were monitoring major news offices because of this.
Many people have not been bent over by insurance, but that's the less confusing part of this post.
Almost everyone who has been bent over by insurance will still find someone who assassinated another dude guilty.
Similarly, a defendant's race is not relevant to their guilt, but you're not going to pick a self-declared racist if you don't have to.
They won't have trouble seating a jury, and he'll be convicted of 1st degree homicide and spend the rest of his adult life in prison.
1. https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/poll-finding/kff-surve...
But if you’re unlucky, it can ruin your life or the life of a loved one. It’s not hard to find horror stories - some recent viral ones came from LinkedIn comments to the CEO (written before his murder)
That is seriously underestimating the attention span of law enforcement. I’m not saying that they would have caught him for sure, but they have motivation and means to keep looking far longer than a few weeks.
> Being on the lam implies they knew his identity; they did not.
At the minimum they had a picture of his face. That stuff will stay in databases indefinietly and face recognition is only getting better. They might have had his DNA from objects he interacted with or things he discarded. They could have traced his burner phone to locations he previously frequented, or where he bought it from. They could have traced him via video surveilance further along his escape and tied him to a location or a car.
None of this is guaranteed to work. There is a certain amount of luck involved. But just because after a few days they didn’t know who he is, doesn’t mean they could not have found him months or years down the road.
I feel like I'm seeing them more and more.
The killer didn't do any hunting. They did shooting and running.
All of this is besides the central point, which is that a killer would likely be on the run from detectives and maybe PIs for the rest of their lives.
> the rest of their lives
Only if any of their adversaries survive with sufficient will to fight.
I know a lot of game hunters who would say that’s pretty much the definition of hunting.
They're (attempts at) a bon mot
No but please let me know when you find one! And indeed you are correct, this is a fairly new pattern and it's absolutely increasing.
I would bet a lot of the healthcare CEO's are totally surprised that anyone would want to harm them.
I certainly wouldn’t work evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays, not to mention sacrifice my life during my 20s. And be around gross stuff and sad people.
And especially not when you can earn a comparable profit working behind keyboard.
I don’t understand what this means. A group of doctors get together and open a business offering their services, and they distribute profits into their bank accounts. Or a dentist, or an optometrist, or a podiatrist.
Why would 99% of people do this work if they cannot profit?
> A decent compromise is what most countries do, which is that citizens pay a fixed sum for health insurance which covers most of the basic expenses.
That is just health insurance with $0 deductible/copays. Some US employers do offer this, and some even pay 100% of the premiums.
But these plans don’t sell well to the broader public, because most people would prefer (or can only afford) a lower premium and accept the volatility of having to spend a few hundred or a few thousand before insurance kicks in.
In some (many?) countries the options for private healthcare are limited (by design) and public healthcare takes care of people. Not in USA though. :) It has its pros and cons, but to be honest, neither system works very well. I would pick a public one anytime, but maybe it's just because I know it.
> Why would 99% of people do this work if they cannot profit?
They do profit, and should - they get a paycheck for their work.
I have a 3.5 year old toddler and it sure feels hard on my soul right now (he just behaved the worst he's ever behaved in daycare today, to the point that they had to isolate him... and this is me dealing with it after only 3 hours of sleep, since he also keeps waking up every night ever since he turned 3... "sleep regression" should be called "slow parricide via toddler non-sleep")
Wahlgren, Anna (2009). A Good Night's Sleep - This is how you can truly help your baby to sleep through the night. Anna Wahlgren AB. ISBN 9789197773614
I'm saying this as a father who was going through the worst time of my life as my baby daughter's top 3 records for "most sleep in one night" was 5 hours (which only happened that one time), 3 hours (which only happened that one other time), and then never ever more than 2 sleep cycles of 45 minutes on any day/night.Sleep deprivation makes your life so miserable. And it does so for the toddler as well. My daughter couldn't learn to walk and kept falling over because, well, she was just too exhausted.
It seems the book isn't as well known in the US (where I'm assuming you are) as it is in Europe, and maybe there are equivalent approaches from American authors as well. But this is the one that solved the problem and taught her to sleep in 4 - four - nights.
My wife and I applied the stuff from the book from Dec.1st to Dec.4th of 2018. My daughter has not had trouble sleeping her 11+ hours straight a single night since then (that was 6 years ago) except a couple of times when she was teething.
I was recently asked on a (business) podcast what was the top book that changed my life and that was it. To think you could struggle for such a long time, and suddenly find out you could change that in 4 days... I have tears in my eyes whenever I talk about it.
Anyway. Long message to wish you well, internet stranger. It will get better.
Just like, trying to describe the lifestyle changes that got you in shape (which are always going to be the same 4-5 basic things), is less helpful than telling someone "go to the same coach/book I went to, and give it a try".
But in a nutshell, the book teaches a few simple principles of why kids wake up/cry and how what we (as parents) typically do to console the child actually sends the message that "sleeping in this bed is not safe".
Once you get that, it gives you a 4-day (and 4-nights) routine to follow to get the baby/toddler/infant/child to re-learn that this is a safe place, your parents are around, you can go back to sleep. Doing the full 4 days is a two-person job (my wife and I rented a room at the hotel next door and took turns with one of us sleeping there while the other was with our daughter at home).
We followed everything to the letter ; the first couple of days is timed very precisely and you take notes in a journal as you go, which is how I can tell you that we were already tearing up when our daughter slept in 3-hour chunks the 2nd night, did an almost 8-hour streak on night 3 and pulled a full 11-hour night on night 4.
I'll tell you, the least important part of the whole thing is a short lullaby we came up with as we were going to the 4 days, and I still sing that to my daughter 6 years later as I leave her for the night, as this has become a bit of a talisman for me :-) Definitely not needed anymore but I'll probably sing her this song until she leaves for college or tells me to shut up!
If only I knew what steps to follow on those 4 precious nights...
"Paperback: From $473"
Yikes. :/
Can't find an ebook of it either...
Willing to sell it or pass it along? (Best Christmas ever? lol)
Thank you for the kind thoughts regardless. It really is a struggle, to say the least.
I'm going to have a look at whether there's a more popular author with a similar philosophy.
I'm sorry, maybe it's not my place, but... Please listen to him. Children are not stupid, they just lack experience. If he behaves some way then there is a reason for it. The usual suspect is lack of attention (which is very important for a child), since they get more of it (even if in form of punishment) for behaving "badly"... The outcome is predictable.
I found that treating them as adults when it comes to respecting their wishes goes a long way towards raising a good person.
Again, sorry for an unsolicited advice from a random person on the internet. Especially as it sounds like life is very stressful for you right now. Fingers crossed everything gets better soon.
The stuff found on him is irrelevant, they'd pin him down with dna and whatever other evidence.