In December, Luigi Mangione was arrested for shooting health insurance executive Brian Thompson. Last week, Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced that she was seeking the death penalty. It’s a highly unusual announcement, since Mangione hasn’t even been indicted yet on a federal level. (He has been indicted in Manhattan.) By intervening in this high-profile case, the Trump administration has made clear that it believes that CEOs are especially important people whose deaths need to be swiftly and mercilessly avenged.

  • Rachel
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    21 days ago

    I think the death penalty being on the table would increase the likelihood of the jury finding a reasonable doubt or jury nullification. It would only hurt the prosecution imo.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      21 days ago

      OR it’s going to prejudice the jury against him, like it usually does.

      When capital punishment is on the table, only people who are in favor of it are selected for the jury, and people who are in favor of state murder are MUCH more likely to return a guilty verdict than people who aren’t.

      That’s one of hundreds of reasons why civilized legal systems don’t murder prisoners anymore.

    • neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      21 days ago

      I kind of agree, if I were in the jury, it would make me think twice about finding them guilty since I would feel like I have someone’s death on my hands.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Why does it feel like the trump administration would use Mangione’s acquittal by jury as a reason to try to attack and do away with the 6th Amendment (trial by jury amendment)?

      • EmptySlime
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        21 days ago

        Luckily it would be really hard for them to actually get rid of it. I wouldn’t put it past them to try to start doing summary executions or just illegally trying to detain people without trial or whatever but there’s 0 chance they get the support to actually remove that amendment.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          The tact taken by this administration isn’t trying to amend the Constitution, its to simply ignore it. There are three branches of government in the USA. trump’s Executive branch and the Legislative appear to be in nearly lock-step in ignoring the Constitution and their duties to uphold it. The Supreme Court has capitulated in almost every action trump’s Executive has asked, with only minor pushback. The recent 9-0 Supreme Court decision requiring the trump administration to return of Ábrego García to the USA is the first real pushback we’ve seen. So far trump is continuing to ignore the return requirement.

          In other words, the Constitution is worthless if the bodies in power charged with its defense choose to simply break their oath of office and not defend it.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        20 days ago

        They won’t “do away with it” in any official way, but they’ve already stopped obeying it.

    • Chozo@fedia.io
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      21 days ago

      Yep, if you set the bar extraordinarily high, then you have to jump extraordinarily high. Bondi’s likely doing more harm than good for her cause.

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      There’s no way this jury is going to be allowed to find him innocent much less jury nullification. If they can’t be bribed they’ll be threatened.