"[If] the jury were to find Mangione guilty while accepting the emotional disturbance defence, they would have to convict him of manslaughter."

"That would carry a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, rather than murder, which could mean a life sentence. An extreme emotional disturbance defence only applies to defendants in New York state who are accused of murder. It differs from a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' defence, which would allow a defendant to go to a psychiatric facility instead of prison...."

From "Luigi Mangione withdraws plans for psychiatric defence at murder trial/Lawyers earlier said they would argue the Ivy League graduate, 28, was suffering from ‘extreme emotional disturbance’ when he allegedly shot Brian Thompson" (London Times).

"Days after his arrest and before Mangione retained her as his lead attorney, [Karen Friedman] Agnifilo told CNN that a psychiatric defence could be the right move for him. 'There might be a not guilty by reason of insanity defence that they’re going to be thinking about, because the evidence is going to be so overwhelming that he did what he did,' Friedman Agnifilo, then a CNN legal analyst, told the network."

"The performance turned out to be a string of gags about Bankman-Fried’s and Diddy’s sins that largely spared Mangione of the worst ridicule."

"It instead featured running jokes about how parts of the internet find him attractive, while the titular character is gifted love ballads, literally and metaphorically. His cast members call him a 'prodigy' and a 'legend.' His response: 'I’m not a celebrity. I’m just a normal, exceedingly handsome guy. To make matters worse, they all sing...."

From "'Luigi: The Musical' is a fever dream from hell/The show isn’t meant to 'glorify violence,' but it does. The protesters outside, meanwhile, think it doesn’t go far enough" (WaPo)(gift link).

"The musical has a bare-bones plot, practically no choreography and nothing in the way of a set apart from a couple of chairs and one prop, a gun. All that could be forgiven in a staged reading, but what is glaringly absent is any serious mention of [Brian] Thompson’s name or the wife and two sons he left behind. It’s clear the show’s creators think they have tapped into some profound observation of the nihilistic trends running through today’s culture: our numb responses to mass violence, the disintegration of societal trust. 'What kind of sick f---- would buy tickets to something like that?,' the characters lament onstage about the musical, in what’s meant to be a self-critical, meta moment...."

"Two state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione... were dismissed on Tuesday, including one that had accused him of first-degree murder."

"Mr. Mangione, 27, is still charged with second-degree murder. The decision by Justice Carro is a blow to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, led by Alvin L. Bragg. The prosecutors had argued that a terrorism charge was warranted because Mr. Mangione had targeted an executive 'of the United States’ largest health insurance company in front of the hotel where the company was about to conduct its annual investor conference' in Midtown Manhattan, which they said was 'widely recognized as the media capital of the world.' Mr. Bragg has said that the act was 'a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation.'"

The NYT reports.

Mangione also faces charges in federal court in Pennsylvania state court. 

ADDED: Here's the NY statute showing what it takes for murder in the first degree: "(xiii) the victim was killed in furtherance of an act of terrorism, as defined in paragraph (b) of subdivision one of section 490.05 of this chapter...." Section 490.05 defines "terrorism" to include acts intended to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population."

"Terry Long, football gave me CTE and it caused me to drink a gallon of antifreeze.... Please study brain for CTE. I’m sorry. The league knowingly concealed the dangers to our brains to maximize profits. They failed us.”

Wrote Shane Tamura, quoted in "NYC mass shooter Shane Tamura found with note blaming NFL for giving him CTE — even though he never played pro football" (NY Post).

Terry Long, was a "former Pittsburgh Steelers player who was diagnosed with CTE after downing antifreeze to kill himself 20 years ago."

Tamura apparently intended "to shoot up the NFL HQ — but 'mistakenly went up the wrong elevator banks' and ended up on a higher floor."

Was Tamura influenced by Luigi Mangione?

By the way, "CNN’s Erin Burnett is being skewered for reporting that the gunman who opened fire in a Midtown skyscraper — killing an NYPD cop and three others — was 'possibly white' after viewing the initial security footage released immediately after Shane Tamura’s deadly rampage" (NY Post).

"Let’s take it as a given, in any case, that it is wrong to murder a person, and then move quickly on from that baseline moral assumption."

"What can be said about the powerful and in many ways surprising reaction to the cold-blooded killing of Thompson, and to the chief suspect in that crime, Luigi Mangione?... The crime itself, and the growing agglomeration of cultural evidence around it, is almost hysterically overdetermined. It’s about the barbarism of America’s health care system; it’s about the extent to which people have become desensitized to violence; it’s about how the Internet has melted everyone’s brains; it’s about how we can’t help judging attractive people... by different standards from those we apply to everyone else; it’s about a growing and quasi-revolutionary rage at the structural violence of capitalism; and it’s about (depending on which opinion columnist you want to go with) white privilege, the coarsening of American political discourse, and the problem of male loneliness.... If Mangione did commit the murder of which he stands accused, it may have been because he felt that more democratic and ethical ways of refashioning a system grotesquely misshapen in the interests of the rich were not viable, or at least less attractive."

Writes Mark O'Connell, in "Single-Player Politics/Luigi Mangione’s alleged killing of a health care CEO was conceived—and received—as a move within a game of symbols" (NYRB).

I can't believe I read that. I'm getting a little hysterically overdetermined. 

"Nearby, a woman who asks me to call her Kim is selling T-shirts either depicting Mangione in religious garb or in a pink, babygirl-ified photo collage..."

"... that includes at least one shirtless photo. 'I’m making light of the situation. At the end of the day, I’m very passionate about class solidarity,' she says. 'I think we’re in really dark times right now.' Fellow cheeky-T-shirt wearer Nadine Seiler, the self-proclaimed 'Cougar for Luigi,' tells me she made her shirt with a group of friends on Valentine’s Day. They got together and ate red velvet cupcakes with gummy worms inside, which she says represent the parasitic ruling class. 'It’s good to get together, have a serious discussion, and have people understand what is going on in this country and that we need to be doing something different,' she says. 'I’m having fun while focusing on the serious issue at hand, which are these CEOs taking advantage of the masses and we’re still giving them our money.'"

From "At the Courthouse With Luigi Mangione’s 'Fangirls'" (The Cut).

Rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery say he must go free....

I'm reading "Grinning Luigi Mangione yuks it up in court as he enters plea in execution of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson" (NY Post):

At least two dozen women packed the courtroom for the twisted heartthrob, with just six men watching on....

"It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer...."

"In my 35 years as a filmmaker, have I said or done anything that has implied I condone murder?... Throughout my adult life, I have repeatedly stated that I’m a pacifist. In fact, I have never struck another human in my life. Not even on the playground...."

Writes Michael Moore, in "A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies/I hereby give you my Oscar-nominated Documentary on the Killer Health Insurance companies like United HealthCare —SICKO — for FREE… and let’s end and replace this so-called 'health care system' NOW" (MichaelMoore.com).

In the United States, we have a whopping 1.4 million people employed with the job of DENYING HEALTH CARE, vs only 1 million doctors in the entire country! That’s all you need to know about America. We pay more people to deny care than to give it....

"Holding space."

 Perhaps you're noticing this today:

Margaret Cho: "I'm holding space for that CEO shooter, the abs, and that body"

The American left's creepy fascination with Luigi Mangione continuespic.twitter.com/CJbFoys6iN

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) December 15, 2024

That's Margaret Cho: "I'm holding space for... those eyebrows, that body, the abs."

She's being funny... and inappropriate, and I'm not going to say anything more about how bad it is to drool over an alleged murderer. I want to discuss the phrase "holding space," which gained traction a week ago with this promotional interview for the movie "Wicked":

"People are taking the lyrics of 'Defying Gravity' and really holding space with that and feeling power in that."

I see there's a Wikipedia article, "Holding space":

"Holding space" is a psychology concept meaning towards creating a safe space for someone or something by being present for them, physically, emotionally and mentally without judgement.

Peter Thiel talks to Piers Morgan about Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione.

It's an interesting discussion, but many people are getting hung up on Thiel's very awkward, disfluent manner of speaking:

Morgan shows Thiel a clip that Luigi Mangione shared on social media. It's a clip of Thiel himself, and Thiel says it's the first time he's heard about the alleged killer's interest in him. In that clip, Thiel says:

"'He’s hot as shit, you must acquit' demanded one woman online, while others wrote: 'Free Luigi!'..."

"Among the viral posts on Twitter is a photograph of a woman privately messaging Mangione after his arrest, which has been viewed more than 3.2 million times. 'Baby, I know you don’t know me, but I will be praying for your entire exoneration and freedom from this point forward. In exchange, I’m begging you to start an Only Fans account,' she wrote. 'Fan cams' worshipping the 'Gen Z assassin' have also appeared on TikTok, with users uploading musical montages featuring images of him shirtless and smiling.... The reaction to the murder has forced American authorities to remind the public that 'this killer was not a hero'.... Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania... said... 'In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint....'" 

From "'The hot assassin': how the internet became obsessed with Luigi Mangione/The 26-year-old charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, has found support among social media users" (London Times).

"[Luigi Mangione] followed a variety of accounts befitting a typically online young man — self-help gurus like Andrew Huberman, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and 'heterodox' thinkers..."

"... such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, as well as Joe Rogan. His strongest interest by far is in the work of Tim Urban, a writer and illustrator popular with tech types who publishes science explainers and anti-woke political writing about how polarization is bad and rationalism can save the world. There was one prominent exception to his innocuous online trail, though. Early this year, he favorably reviewed the book-length manifesto of Theodore Kaczynski, a fellow math whiz better known as the Unabomber, who killed and maimed people he believed had ruined the world with technology. 'It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,' he wrote. 'But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.' Mangione then quoted a 'take I found online that I think is interesting,' which ended by saying '"violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.' The manifesto found on Mangione is said to have stated 'these parasites had it coming.'"

From "What We Know About the UnitedHealthcare CEO Murder Suspect/An elite son is charged in the killing that also struck at corporate America" (NY Magazine).

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not."

Wrote Dr. Seuss, in "The Lorax," quoted by Luigi Mangione at Goodreads.

Quoted in "Man Arrested After C.E.O. Killing Showed Interest on Social Media in Self-Improvement/Figures like Andrew Huberman, Tim Urban and the Unabomber feature in posts shared by accounts that appear to belong to the man arrested on Monday" (NYT).

Mangione is the "Man Arrested."