Moments after Luigi Mangione was handcuffed at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.
The discovery, recounted in court Monday as Mangione fights to keep evidence out of his New York murder case, convinced police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that he was the man wanted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan five days earlier.



Look up depraved heart murder.
It’s a real legal tool used by prosecutors all over the country. The idea is that if someone actively chooses to take actions so incredibly dangerous in pursuit of their own interests that it is likely to cause people to die, that indifference to human life can be treated as malice aforethought (intent to kill) and they can be charged with 2nd degree murder for any deaths resulting from thise actions. The classic example would be knowingly selling tainted food or medicine for profit.
And it’s not just a US law. China literally executed executives for signing off on the sale of tainted baby formula.
Brian Thompson intentionally ordered the increased rejection of pre-authorizations for covered procedures and medications in order to drive up profit, resulting in a great deal of injury and death.
Is random people shooting execs in the street my preferred choice for how society handles these issues? No. But when official justice is denied, the inevitable result is people deciding to act on it themselves.
Johnson is dead because he was shot, yes. But more than that, he’s dead because the justice system refuses to hold people like him accountable for their illegal actions.
You really need to know how it works before you argue it. I get that one of you looked this up one day- and the rest of lemmy all piled on thinking that it’s a one-and-done legal defense after only just reading about it, but…
Proof of INTENT TO KILL means he’d have to know without question that they would have died, and that they had NO OTHER MEANS to acquire the procedure. This is nearly impossible to prove and the entire defense could rest on this notion alone.
For the record, I’m not agreeing with this shit-
I’m simply pointing out why it’s not so fucking simple as it seems. Everyone here seems to think the easiest solution is the best solution without ever questioning why the easiest solution seems so easy, yet no one has tried it.
Hope this helps:
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1337&context=dlj
That’s literally not how depraved heart murder works.
The CEO of a Waterpark (schlitterbahn) was arrested for murder after a child died by decapitation on a slide because he’d paid off people who were hurt on it previously to keep quiet so they wouldn’t have to shut down the ride. He didn’t know for sure that particular child would die, or whether anyone would die at all. But he was so indifferent to the known danger that it counted as motive.
Johnson ordered his people to deny millions of medical procedures the patients were entitled to. He absolutely knew people would die, even if he didn’t know any specific person would.
Two entirely different scenarios won’t equate to the same outcome regardless of how much you’d like them to.
One is an illegal payoff that implies an acknowledgement of guilt- the other is a denial of non-mandated service that caused death.
In the US, you are not required by federal law to have Health Insurance. Therefore, denying health insurance services is NOT illegal! So whichever one of you ignorantly tried to tie a Deprived Heart Murder (aka: “reckless endangerment”) to the CEO of a health insurance company, needs to learn how criminal law works, and also should have looked to see if there’s even precedence in a case such as this.
(Yeah… There isn’t by the way)
Now, I’m done arguing this with you. You’re forcing an outcome based on an emotional response, and I’m logically trying to lead you to what is factually true, despite it being something you don’t want to accept.
You want to deny reality- be my guest, but know that bad faith comparisons to force an inaccurate outcome waste time and dilute the water of reasonable discussion.
You also aren’t legally required to go down a waterslide.
Knowingly selling insurance then intentionally withholding care as the patients are entitled to as long as possible hoping they’ll gove up or die in the process so you can increase profits is absolutely worthy of depraved heart homicide.
And it’s not the same thing as reckless endangerment. Reckless endangerment leading to death is manslaughter. Depraved Indifference leading to death is murder.
I don’t expect you to keep replying because you know you’re wrong on this, and the more we argue the worse you look.
ROFL…