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Virginie Grimaldi

Description

When a CEO is shot on a Manhattan sidewalk and the accused becomes an internet folk hero, what does justice actually require?

In December 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down outside a Midtown hotel. Within days, Luigi Mangione—a 26-year-old valedictorian with no prior record—was in federal custody. Within weeks, the internet had made him a saint. Within months, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced via social media graphic that the federal government would seek his execution.

The People v. Luigi Mangione refuses every easy answer this case invites.

Jeff Hood, a spiritual advisor who has witnessed eleven executions, and Alli Sullivan, a chronically ill death penalty abolitionist who has spent years fighting executions, bring unusual moral authority to one of the most-watched criminal cases in decades. Across eight essays, they condemn the killing of Brian Thompson. They condemn the pursuit of the death penalty against Mangione. And they condemn the healthcare industry whose denial letters kill quietly, by the thousands, while the country looks away.

Inside, you'll find:

A searing analysis of how the federal death penalty actually operates—before indictment, before defense, before justice A theological meditation on Mangione's engagement with Krishnamurti and Christ, and the "yearning to be revolutionary" that may have destroyed him A firsthand account of life inside the American healthcare system, and the structural violence that kills without ever pulling a trigger An unflinching critique of the Luigi fandom—the memes, the thirst posts, the courthouse campouts—and how performative support is helping the prosecution build its case Concrete policy proposals: mandatory disclosure of denial rates, criminal liability for fraudulent denials, bans on AI-driven claim rejections A warning about what happens when a democracy outsources moral reasoning to hashtags

Hood and Sullivan are equal-opportunity disappointers. Readers looking to canonize Mangione will find no support here. Readers who want him executed will find a detailed argument for why state killing solves nothing. What both will find is a book that takes seriously what most commentary refuses to: that two forms of violence—the bullet and the denial letter—are part of the same American problem, and neither will be fixed by killing one more person.

A clear-eyed, morally serious reckoning with the case that exposed everything broken at the center of American life.

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