Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
First, the charge undermines trust in the U.S. justice system. Of the notable major white supremacist domestic terrorist attacks over the past decade—acts that have claimed dozens of victims, striking communities such as Charleston, Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, El Paso, and Jacksonville—only the Buffalo shooter has faced a terrorism charge, at the state level in New York (under a different provision of the penal code than at issue in the Mangione case). Christopher Hasson, a white supremacist Coast Guardsman who federal prosecutors argued “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” was only prosecuted for drug and gun charges (although a judge did apply a terrorism enhancement to his sentence).
The uneven application of terrorism charges risks providing evidence to disenchanted individuals that the justice system is two tiered—punishing only those of particular racial or economic standing.
Second, the case sets a bad precedent, undermining efforts to prosecute and punish acts that do meet the expectations built into the provisions of the law. In May 2023, we argued that the Jan. 6 prosecutions underscored why Congress should pass federal domestic terrorism laws. “Jan. 6 defendants who were convicted of felonies have been sentenced to just 33 months—less than three years”—a meager sentence compared to the average 13.5 years faced by Islamic State-associated defendants prosecuted for material support to a foreign terrorist organization. This was despite many Jan. 6 defendants clearly satisfying the threshold of “generating fear” outlined in many terrorism definitions. Mangione’s case, however, offers a data point to critics who argue that federal domestic terrorism laws would be abused by overzealous and overtly political prosecutors who might deploy the charge against their detractors, likely deterring or delaying the establishment of a federal domestic terrorism statute. Broader laws ensure that prosecutors and law enforcement officials have the necessary tools to take action when it’s warranted, but with great power comes even greater responsibility to use such authorities justly and in ways that do not fundamentally undermine the law’s effectiveness.
Finally, the charge risks glorifying violent acts, encouraging action by those who seek public recognition. At a time in which “41 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 said they found [the killer’s actions] acceptable,” this overzealous charge could lionize him further, bolstering his image as a martyr. This scenario played out at the U.S. Capitol in January, as a woman was arrested with improvised explosive devices while claiming to target Trump administration cabinet members. She admitted she “had been thinking about this for a while because of Luigi Mangione.” Yet perhaps even more seriously, there is a risk the government will lose or drop the case, undermining the message of opprobrium it intended to send in the first place.
A cynical interpretation may be that the charges are simply part of the larger showmanship that has characterized the case so far, as opposed to a serious effort to hold Mangione accountable for his actions. Indeed, Mayor Eric Adams’s insistence that “I wanted to look him in the eye and say you carried out this terroristic act in my city—the city that the people of New York love, and I wanted to be there to show the symbolism of that” was undermined by Mangione’s aforementioned admission that he used a gun to limit casualties among “innocent” people, a targeting decision that would not have been taken by an assailant seeking to terrorize a broad population.
They conclude:
As the New York legislature recognized in passing the ATA, state anti-terrorism laws are crucial to ensure that terrorists face justice because they help ease the burden from the federal system and catch cases that may fall through the cracks due to the limits—or nonexistence—of federal legislation. When, however, these laws are drafted with broad language that can be exploited by aggressive prosecutors, their benefits give way to dangerous ramifications.
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, where lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise. Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system, particularly with respect to offenses like terrorism that open up uniquely coercive powers of the state beyond the standard instruments of law enforcement. That discretion was abused here with unfortunate consequences for public faith in the law, the legitimacy of the legal system, and the broader campaign against domestic attacks of terrorism.
