Luigi Mangione is expected to plead guilty as early as Friday in the federal case accusing him of stalking and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a stunning development in a case that rattled business leaders while galvanizing their critics, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Well the federal charge wasn’t just “stalking”.
It was “stalking resulting in death”.
There’s no federal murder statute. The action was crossing state lines to kill him. Federally that’s stalking resulting in death. NY state law that’s murder. Same action, different charges.
Well not really. Stalking resulting in death wouldn’t necessarily mean they committed murder, would it? If you were stalking someone and they got hit by a car running from you, that’s not murder but it would be stalking resulting in death wouldn’t it?
There’s no federal murder charge. This is the closest equivalent. It’s fundamentally the same thing and carries the same penalties. You can literally think of it as the same charge just worded differently.
Ok but the stalking resulting in death doesn’t necessarily involve murder, does it? It just means that they ended up dead, right?