It sounds absurd to say that Luigi Mangione’s alleged targeted killing of health care executive Brian Thompson wasn’t a “crime of violence.” And yet a federal judge cited Supreme Court precedent to support that counterintuitive conclusion when she dismissed a charge that could’ve landed Mangione on death row for the 2024 shooting in midtown Manhattan.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett acknowledged that the analysis in her ruling “may strike the average person — and indeed many lawyers and judges — as tortured and strange.” But the Biden appointee, who seemed to count herself among the stricken, insisted that previous high court rulings required that result.
Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty, still faces federal charges that carry the possibility of life imprisonment, and that’s on top of state charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office. The state prosecutor’s office is pushing to bring the defendant to trial in July, before his scheduled federal trial date in September.
Federal prosecutors can appeal Garnett’s ruling if they want to try and reinstate the possibility of capital punishment, which New York doesn’t have. Donald Trump’s first administration resumed federal executions after a nearly two-decade hiatus.
If the death penalty remains off the table for Mangione, he can thank the justices’ rulings in recent decades — specifically, something called the “categorical approach” — for determining whether an offense counts as a “crime of violence” under federal law.
That highly formalized method doesn’t ask whether the defendant’s conduct was actually violent in a given case. Rather, it asks whether violating the law at issue by definition requires violent force against another, and it requires the crime be committed with more than a merely reckless state of mind. If it meets those technical requirements, then it’s a “crime of violence.” If it doesn’t, then it’s not.
Bearing in mind that even the judge conceded this analytical enterprise doesn’t make much sense — at least not in this sort of situation — we need to start with Mangione’s federal indictment to understand how it applies in his case. The government charged him with four counts: 1) interstate travel for the purpose of stalking Thompson, causing his death; 2) use of electronic communication systems for the purpose of stalking Thompson, causing his death; 3) murdering Thompson through use of a firearm during and in relation to the stalking crimes in counts 1 and 2; and 4) using a firearm during and in relation to those stalking crimes.
Against that backdrop, the life-or-death legal question is whether those underlying stalking crimes are “crimes of violence,” as they would need to be in order for the government to convict Mangione under the second two counts. Applying the categorical approach, Garnett found they aren’t. Part of her reasoning was that they don’t require the government to prove use of force as defined by the high court, because a defendant could commit those crimes recklessly.
Again, the judge wasn’t evaluating Mangione’s alleged conduct, which she made clear was violent. Rather, she applied the formal analysis required by the Supreme Court. That analysis led her to dismiss counts 3 and 4. Since count 3 is a capital offense, that removed the possibility of execution for Mangione, unless the government revives the charge on appeal and convicts him and secures a death sentence.
If the government appeals, then the high court majority that greenlit Trump’s revival of federal executions will confront whether its strange jurisprudence prevents the possibility of Mangione reaching death row.
If the case does get to Washington, at least one justice might have something to stay about it. Garnett noted in her ruling that Justice Clarence Thomas, who has often sided with the government in capital cases, has criticized the categorical approach and advocated for a conduct-based analysis. She cited a 2022 dissent in which he lamented “the mischief that the categorical approach has caused” and argued that “we should welcome briefing on whether a conduct-based approach tacks closer to statutory text and common sense.”
Citing Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” Thomas wrote, “Even Alice, having slaked her curiosity, eventually returned from the land beyond the looking glass. It is high time that this Court do the same.”
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