Luigi Mangione indicted on terrorism charges | Hacker News Reader

Luigi Mangione indicted on terrorism charges

npr.org

They might as well charge him with fraud, forgery, money laundering, embezzlement, and jay-walking, too, while they're tossing names of random irrelevant crimes around.

His defense fundraiser is already north of 140k: https://www.givesendgo.com/legalfund-ceo-shooting-suspect

They are charging him with forgery.

Are you serious? This trial is going to be a hoot.

Don't understand why people are taking offense. Whether you sympathize with the killing or not, killing someone because you believe what they do harms the society is a textbook case of political terrorism. If, say, someone kills a prime minister in Europe for their country's foreign policy, nobody will have any problem calling it an act of terrorism.

You may not condone it, but it is relatively easy to understand. No collateral damage, single victim -- people get flustered when there is attempted moral equivalence with the goto decaptitating standins of Al Q and Islamic State brigades and acts with indiscriminate collateral damage.

>nobody will have any problem calling it an act of terrorism

Perhaps, but this slightly different than saying "people will prefer to call it an act of terrorism". I'm pretty sure that, depending on degree to which the prime minister or leader is deemed "authoritarian", some people and some media outlets will prefer to call it an "assasination".

> someone kills a prime minister in Europe

Sure. And the law here also says that if someone kills a politician, they can be charged with terrorism

But the law doesn’t say anything about CEOs or other private citizens

Sure, charge the guy with all the murder counts you want, but terrorism is a big stretch

However, “never let a good crisis go to waste”. So the terrorism concept is going to get milked here for sure

Whenever a loaded label is misapplied, it diminishes legitimate meaning.

To be fair, that's been happening with "terrorism" for a really long time.

AFAIK once something is dubbed "terrorism" a lot of the rules and procedures get checked out the window.

I know, surprising.

And that’s a big issue

The govt has shown that they can legally do pretty much whatever they want with someone they deem a terrorist, 0 accountability

Like all those peeps in Guantanamo

More recently, Snowden showed us what the consequences of something like the patriot act are

It’s a very slippery slope

They can also bomb children via their Israel proxy because they live near-ish to a "terrorist".

I am not a prosecutor obviously but I think there's danger here in overcharging a defendant that for a large part of the US at least has an understandable motive. There's some risk that this makes him look even more sympathetic.

terrorism?

so, like, Luigi Mangione and Osama Bin Laden are on the same level now?

That’s essentially what we are being told, yes

Seems like a reasonable move for the prosecution. To defend against terrorism charges he'd need to admit to a non-political motive. I bet they'll get a plea deal for murder w/o terrorism.

I'm hoping for a big public trial, but I don't expect it because 'the man' doesn't want that. Mangione will negotiate a super lax plea deal that avoids a trial.

> To defend against terrorism charges he'd need to admit to a non-political motive.

Like getting mad from untreated searing pain? https://www.medpagetoday.com/painmanagement/backpain/113435

Absurd. Also worth noting that the government plans to share state intelligence information directly with corporations:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42413559

And there you have it. Never let a good crisis go to waste

Good luck getting a jury to agree!

Interesting how the media incessantly talks about a school shooting when it happens, but this gets negligible airtime.

Also interesting how Trump says this is “a sickness” but turns around and is totally okay with folks like Kyle Rittenhouse.

> Also interesting how Trump says this is “a sickness”

Indeed this was caused by sickness. Spondylolisthesis was the cause of his back pain. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spondylolisthesis

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