Luigi and Terrorism?

DA Alvin Bragg's latest charge is weak and shaky

(Luigi Mangione - used courtesy of Yahoo News)

Alvin Bragg, New York County’s District Attorney, has his work cut out in the Luigi Mangione case. He is not just charging Mangione with first degree murder, but Bragg has added an “act of terrorism” charge. This is probably a noble decision in the eyes of many people but it does not look as if it is a strong charge.

The language being used by Bragg and others to explain the decision to add the charge is to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” While it can be argued that Mangione sought to intimidate Brian Thompson (and murder him if he is the shooter), it is a bigger leap to extend that to the “civilian population.” In fact, a large segment of the civilian population is not worried about Mangione (the alleged shooter) at all. They were not even worried when he was still at large after the shooting.

In fact, Mangione is a folk hero right now. The civilian population knows that if he was the shooter, he was not coming for them. His gripe, as the available evidence reveals, was specifically with United Health Care and the people who run the company.

According to New York city law, an act of terrorism is described as follows:

“A person is guilty of a crime of terrorism when, with intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping, he or she commits a specified offense.”

So what Bragg has done is charge Mangione with first degree murder and then has added that his murder was an “intent to intimidate… a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation…or affect the conduct of a unit of government” with that murder. I just don’t see Bragg’s charge lasting the challenges likely to come.

Bragg might be able to sustain the charge but he doesn’t need it. I am wondering if someone higher up the chain called him and had his ear on this stretch of a charge. Bragg should just focus on the incident as a first degree murder and make it stick.

Mangione tracked Brian Thompson, followed him, laid in wait and shot him to death. New York state’s statute on first degree murder even makes a reference to the terrorism law when is states that if “the victim was killed in furtherance of an act of terrorism” it is first degree murder. But it doesn’t help Bragg’s case really.

In 2011, in People v. Morales, the New York Court of Appeals ordered re-sentencing in that murder conviction involving an individual who was a member of a gang who targeted an individual who was a suspected rival gang member. The court wrote that “the concept of terrorism has a unique meaning and its implications risk being trivialized if the terminology is applied loosely in situations that do not match our collective understanding of what constitutes a terrorist act.”

Bragg’s charge on Mangione sounds like that. Mangione’s target that night was one person and it is not really clear if he expected to continue his alleged murders. He also did not expect to escape judging by how easy he was to identify, locate, and arrest. This is not Ted Kaczynski in other words, the man known as the “Unabomber.”

Kaczynski, as most of us remember, had physical targets but his actions were rooted in ideology that he expressed deeply and with great detail in writing. Kaczynski sent his first mail bomb in 1978 and was not arrested until 1996. Mangione, or whoever did this, has no such record and Mangione, as far as we know, did not type a 35,000 word manifesto on his views that was available for evaluation in several newspapers.

As far as we can tell, Luigi Mangione’s target was Brian Thompson, CEO of UHC. His short statement does not suggest a larger campaign of violence to come either. We also know now that Mangione’s problem was, at least, personal in nature based on his own mistreatment by some part of the health care system.

Bragg might make the charge stick but I can see it getting overturned. This is a murder not a campaign of terrorism to scare the public.