The Trump administration is seeking the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who is scheduled back in court this week. Plus, a closer look at a work that may have inspired Mangione (the Unabomber’s manifesto). This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Jolie Myers, fact checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Luigi Mangione appearing at a February hearing for the murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson. Photo by Curtis Means - Pool/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Luigi Mangione and what is his legal situation?
Luigi Mangione is supposed to be back in court on Friday, and court looks different when Luigi shows up.
The last time that I was in court with him, there were so many members of the public that wanted to be inside the courtroom, and so many of them were young women.
Mangione has a fan club.
People outside with signs, people inside lining up. I mean, sometimes for a really long time to just want to get into the courtroom to see him. It's just a different experience than the people that you are typically seeing.
What'll be different this week is that it'd be the first time Mangione appeared since the federal government, the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, Donald Trump have said they would like to seek the death penalty in this case. We're gonna ask how that's gonna go over in New York on Today Explained.
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Chapter 2: What charges is Luigi Mangione facing in federal and state courts?
The 26-year-old faces five charges in Pennsylvania.
Including forgery and possession of a gun without a license.
In New York, he has already been indicted in state court.
Mangione was indicted on charges that included murder as an act of terrorism. The 26-year-old pleaded not guilty.
In federal court, what's going to be happening is he has been charged, but he hasn't actually been indicted. So the case would theoretically advance to another level where he could be indicted. after a grand jury had considered the allegations against him. And then he actually has not entered a plea in his federal case. So he would be probably entering a plea if he were indicted.
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Chapter 3: Why has Luigi Mangione not yet been federally indicted?
Why has he not yet been indicted federally? Do we know?
That's a really good question that is not totally clear at this point, honestly. Every month for the last few months now, the government has asked for an extra 30 days to decide whether or not they're going to bring an indictment.
And we know Pam Bondi came out and said that Mangione will be facing the death penalty in this federal case. Is that right?
So she has directed prosecutors in New York City to seek the death penalty.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of the Trump administration seeking the death penalty for Mangione?
Bondi calling the killing a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination and an act of political violence.
If there was ever a death case, this is one. This guy is charged with hunting down a CEO, a father of two, a married man, hunting him down and executing him.
I mean, this whole case is a bit unprecedented and as we have seen, with several other federal cases since the Trump administration has taken office, that they're not exactly always following the typical protocols. Mangione's attorneys have filed papers challenging this request to seek the death penalty.
calling out pam bondi for putting out this press release where they said that you know she didn't make it clear enough that these are only allegations that he is presumed innocent and actually in the government's response they were saying well it's way too early for the defense to be you know making a stink about the fact that the
There's this directive to seek the death penalty because we haven't even sought it yet. We haven't even indicted him yet. But of course, none of that would have been happening if it weren't for the attorney general putting out this press release, also making an Instagram post saying that she wants the death penalty for Mangione.
What was the Instagram post like? I'm afraid I missed it.
It's like a pull quote from the press release.
But then she actually went on Fox News and she was saying, I was receiving death threats for seeking the death penalty on someone who is charged with an execution of a CEO. We're going to continue to do the right thing. We're not going to be deterred. The president's directive was very clear. We are to seek the death penalty when possible.
Is the state of New York taking issue with the call for the death penalty? Because I believe in New York State, they do not execute prisoners anymore, yeah?
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Chapter 5: How does New York State law differ from federal law regarding the death penalty?
Prosecutors say Saifullo Saipov smiled while talking to investigators and even asked to fly an ISIS flag in his hospital room after allegedly using his truck as a weapon to mow down people on a bike path in 2017, allegedly telling investigators his goal was to kill as many people as possible in order to become a member of ISIS.
In that case, he was convicted, but there was this separate part of the trial where a jury then had to decide whether to give him the death penalty. And it has to be a unanimous decision. It's this whole long process. And in the end, they could not come to a unanimous decision to give him the death penalty. So he was instead sentenced to life in a federal prison.
And this was a mass murderer with fealty to ISIS that a jury could not decide to put to death. Does that mean it's not very likely that Luigi Mangione, an alleged murderer who killed allegedly one person... Who's received unprecedented amounts of letters and has a fan club showing up to court whenever he might be there, who's on the face of votive candles.
Does that make it much less likely that that a New York jury is going to put him to death or does that remain to be seen?
I mean, I think that's a really good question. In Saipov's case, that was an incredibly emotional trial. You had the loved ones of people who had been killed testifying, talking about just the tragic loss of their family members and friends. You actually had surviving victims that were testifying about these horrible injuries and traumas that were lingering.
And even after all of that, that jury decided we are not going to put this person to death. So for someone like Mangione... You know, I could only imagine what it would be like for a jury to be making that type of decision. As you've said, he has garnered so much public support. The Ivy League grad has received an outpouring of support and hundreds of thousands in donations to his legal fund.
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Chapter 6: What can we learn from previous federal death penalty cases like Seyfulo Saipov?
The Manhattan DA called anybody who supports Luigi extreme activists and a lawless mob. Very strong words coming out of the Manhattan DA just because we're tired of being bullied by CEOs.
Are we supposed to hate this guy? Just ask for a jury trial, Luigi. Ask for a jury trial. It's like everyone's behind you, bro. Except for the overlords. Except for the CEOs, obviously.
Though, of course... A few things. I mean, one, this is one of these cases where it's always the question of how much is what's on the Internet real life. And just because our perception of public opinion might be one thing because of how things are playing out on the Internet.
We don't know what it would be like for a jury, which, first of all, juries aren't always totally representative of society. It's a very particular group of people that is available to come to jury service and able to sit on what would likely be a very lengthy trial. But also, if this case does eventually go to trial, if there is eventually a death penalty phase coming,
That will be a long time from now. These cases are very complex. They take a long time to get through all of the investigating, building the case, putting everything together. So we don't know how public sentiment will change between then and now.
You can follow Samantha Max's coverage of Luigi Mangione at Gothamist.com. Last year, Mangione went on Goodreads to leave a review. He wrote, It's easy to quickly write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies, but it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.
He was writing about the Unabomber's Manifesto, and we are going to talk about the enduring influence of that text when we return on Today Explained.
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Chapter 7: How is public opinion and support affecting Luigi Mangione’s case?
This week on Profiteer Markets, we speak with Ryan Peterson, founder and CEO of Flexport, a leader in global supply chain management. We discuss how tariffs are actually impacting businesses, and we get Ryan's take on the likely outcomes of this ongoing trade war.
If they don't change anything and this 145% duty sticks on China, it'll take out like mass bankruptcies. We're talking like 80% of small business that buys from China will just die. And millions of employees will go, you know, it's a... We'll be unemployed. I mean, it's sort of why I'm like, they obviously have to back off the trade. Like, that can't be that they just do that.
I don't believe that they're that crazy.
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So I stumbled across it on this reading list, and I put it aside to read on the weekend. And I expected to be kind of perversely amused by the insane conspiratorial ravings of a madman, like an anti-tech Charles Manson, I suppose. And then I read it, and what struck me is how unconspiratorial it was. Kaczynski doesn't think there's an evil cabal of technocrats plotting to oppress us all.
His entire worldview is evolutionary. And so I thought, this is interesting as political theory. It's extremely radical, and there's a lot I disagree with, but as a historian of political ideas, I thought it would make an interesting side project.
And then it took on a life of its own. Sean Fleming is a research fellow at the University of Nottingham. Lately, he's been doing research on industrial society and its future by one Theodore Kaczynski. He's better known as the Unabomber. The text is better known as the Unabomber's Manifesto. We reached out to him to ask how it may have influenced Luigi Mangione.
I guess I want to be careful what I say about the relationship between Mangione and Kaczynski, and also what I say about Mangione in general. He hasn't been convicted of anything yet. And I haven't seen any hard evidence. that Mangione was inspired by Kaczynski, but there are some interesting parallels.
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Chapter 8: What is the connection between Luigi Mangione and the Unabomber manifesto?
Yes, that's right. Without exaggeration, it might be one of the most read manifestos since the Communist Manifesto. It was soon after published in paperback. It was also uploaded to Time Warner's Pathfinder platform. So it became what might be the first ever internet manifesto. And it's set the template for the manifestos that have become all too common in the aftermath of violent attacks.
And it's very readable. It's got this sort of numbered format where the whole thing is broken down into categories with these sort of points made in every category. It's not the hardest read in the world. It isn't the scrawlings of a madman. It's the ordered philosophy of... A terrorist. He writes that I think a lot of people could find some truth in that statement.
What was he trying to get across with this manifesto?
In the passage you've just quoted, what he's arguing is basically that human beings are biologically maladapted to the modern world. This is a big claim from evolutionary psychology. The argument is that, biologically speaking, we're still Stone Age hunter-gatherers. We evolved hunting large animals on the savannah.
And in the span of just 10,000 years, a blink in evolutionary time, we've constructed this world of concrete, steel, and screens. So Kaczynski argues that Because of this, we suffer from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse, and so many other psychological pathologies that so-called primitive human beings do not. And what's his solution?
His solution is to destroy all modern technology and return ourselves to a more primitive condition, to crash out of the modern world. So basically what he envisions is... A group of anti-tech revolutionaries sabotaging the electric grid, blowing up the gas pipelines, attacking the nervous system, so to speak, of modern society.
And plunging us back into, if not the Stone Age, then something like small-scale agriculture and a shepherd society.
How was this manifesto received in the 90s when it was published by the Washington Post and delivered to, you know, front porches around the country?
Well, there was a lot of debate about it. But overall, the reception of the manifesto was shockingly sympathetic. Many journalists treated Kaczynski as a serious intellectual, and many members of the public in letters to the editor and on talk radio shows hailed him as a folk hero. Wow. He was often described as a modern-day Thoreau.
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