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.
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.
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.
Why the fuck does the prosecution have the ability to put punishments on the table that are known to bias jury selection?
Because the system itself is rigged in favor of the prosecution by design.
Doesn’t the defense have just as much say in terms of who gets selected out and which signals are used to parse that
Not really, no.
AFAIK, the defense and the prosecution get the same number of “just because it’s bad for my side” exclusions, but not being inclined to render a guilty verdict if there’s a possibility of the death penalty is an automatic exclusion that doesn’t count towards the prosecution’s “freebees”.
So yeah, the moment death penalty is on the table, the jury will be biased AND the defense will be much more likely no consider a plea deal for a lesser punishment, further stacking the deck in favor of the prosecution winning one way or the other regardless of actual guilt.
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.
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.
Assuming his trial is carried out normally and isn’t a sham
This ☝️
Trump and his sycophants are really really dumb. Like, really. All they have is muscle. Zero brains.
I didn’t realize muscle was so flabby
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)?
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.
They’re just going to skip the courts altogether like they’ve been doing.
My worry is that trump is thinking of sending him to CECOT.
Trump always starts with the “worst” criminals as he knows it’s hard for Democrats or others to object since they don’t want to be “on the side of criminals,” but it won’t end there.