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Comment by griomnib | Hacker News Reader

As a New Yorker myself, I’m fairly confident.

I'm also a New Yorker and I think that most of us actually do not believe that assassinations are a net benefit to society, no matter how dissatisfied with the health care system we are.

There’s an incredibly strong argument this particular person likely killed tens of thousand of people by his decisions to deny and delay care.

This was not an employee carrying out orders from corporate, it’s the guy who is directly responsible for these deaths. This CEO is as much a mass murder as any other tyrant who commanded soldiers to commit atrocities.

That will be part of the defense argument presented to the jury. Intent matters tremendously in the legal system (mens rea). This isn’t random, this is very, very targeted.

Likewise, the lawyers this guy can afford after his GoFundMe legal defense fund raises millions will be top tier.

Hey now, he didn't just kill tens of thousands of people by denying/delaying care! He also got filthy stinking rich in the process.

…and he was under active investigation for insider trading - which is a real crime the government will prosecute because it affects other rich people.

Killing poor people is fine, cheating the investor class is not.

> That will be part of the defense argument presented to the jury.

That evidence wouldn't be admitted. There's no “the guy deserved it” defense for murder, it's always illegal to kill people.

> That evidence wouldn't be admitted. There's no “the guy deserved it” defense for murder, it's always illegal to kill people.

That's where jury nullification comes in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

I'm aware of jury nullification, but it doesn't change what evidence can be introduced.

A) You literally cannot have a murder trial without presenting a motive or evidence of reckless negligence/behavior (eg drunk driving).

This is not drunk driving, ergo motive will be central to prosecution and defense alike.

B) His lawyers will be the best of the best.

C) Jury nullification.

> A) You literally cannot have a murder trial without presenting a motive or evidence of reckless negligence/behavior (eg drunk driving).

You literally can, You have to, of course, prove the elements of the offense, but iif the defense wants to introduce evidence whose only legal relevance is proving an element of the crime, the prosecution will be more than happy to stipulate to the legally relevant fact and render the evidence unnecessary. Generally, the defense will not wish to prove the crime, though.

> B) His lawyers will be the best of the best.

That’s an argument agasinst them spending effort proving a key element of the offense.

> C) Jury nullification.

Jury nullification exists, but evidence whose only purpose (given the facts in dispute) is to promote it is, ipso facto, legally irrelevant and will be excluded for that reason.

> Jury nullification exists, but evidence whose only purpose (given the facts in dispute) is to promote it is, ipso facto, legally irrelevant and will be excluded for that reason.

What's interesting about this is it places jurors into a position where they need to decide whether to make an adverse inference against the state. If they have reason to believe that the defense may have wanted to present such facts but the state disallowed it, then it makes sense to refuse to convict (even if they wouldn't otherwise be in favor of nullification) so as not to participate in a show trial. But they can't actually know whether this happened because explaining why you committed a crime is usually a terrible idea, so you'd usually expect it to not happen.

That this sort of mass killing is an externality to our legal system is why people have to take matters into their own hands. Our system is flawed and this a a symptom.

Yes Hobbes discussed this in Leviathan.

It is by no means always illegal to kill people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justifiable_homicide

This assassination meets none of the criteria however. I suspect we'd find an amusing overlap between people who want to exculpate the assassin, and those who are opposed to the state applying the death penalty to convicts.

Whether or not the guy had it coming is an opinion, one I'm personally holding off on having until we have more information about it. That means I'm not ruling out thinking so, and harbor hope in any case that it might prompt other health insurance CEOs to consider whether providing better service to their customers might also be in their direct self interest. Then again, I'm not opposed to the death penalty either.

But regardless of where one might fall on that question, it's delusional to think that the state will not regard the assassination as first-degree murder, and that a jury would do other than convict in the event that they're persuaded that the defendant is the same person as the one who was caught on video shooting him in the back. That's not what's going to happen.

There is a double standard though - when a common man is gunned on the street it’s just thoughts and prayers, there’s nothing we can do, etc. But when it’s an elite somehow that death is more important. If there is no justice for them, then there should be no justice here either. Otherwise it just reaffirms that some human lives are worth more than others.

"It was targeted" is not normally a defence, though?

It’s actually generally a point that the prosecution would want to prove, as it is premeditation.

> That will be part of the defense argument presented to the jury. Intent matters tremendously in the legal system (mens rea).

It does, but “he did bad-but-legal things that morally justify my client’s premeditated homicide” is only legally relevant to proving premeditation, which doesn’t help the defense, and which the prosecution will be more than happy to stipulate to rendering the evidence irrelevant.

> This isn’t random, this is very, very targeted.

That’s not a fact in the defense’s favor, legally.

In terms of the jury's willingness to convinct, however, it is likely to weigh heavily.

The fact that evidence is likely to make the jury act on factors outside of the law, combined with it being irrelevant to any legally relevant point in dispute, weighs heavily against it being allowed to be presented at all.

> There’s an incredibly strong argument this particular person likely killed tens of thousand of people by his decisions to deny and delay care.

Anyone got a cite for that? I want to know how that number was measured or calculated.

Is "just following orders" okay now?

Any healthcare worker at least deserves to be punched in the face for involving themselves in our broken system.

I have a different viewpoint that when governance and the judicial systems fail time and time again to fix systemic problems, and the ultra wealthy and large corporations can literally do as they please, that violence is a very logical choice for those who seek retribution.

It was actually a pretty large net positive. Anthem immediately reversed their decision to cap anesthesiology coverage:

https://www.wfsb.com/2024/12/05/anthem-backtracks-anesthesio...

I'm not an expert, but this piece on Vox doesn't take that move as a positive: https://www.vox.com/policy/390031/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shi...

Was the man who strangled a homeless man on the subway convicted of murder, or did the jury let him go in the end? Is it judged yet?

But I agree with you, I think most new Yorkers will convict someone who killed a CEO. Also I bet they'll let go someone who killed a homeless person. I don't know a lot of new Yorkers but petty bourgeois are the same in every countries.

I'm not even a New Yorker, but I can tell you the vast, vast majority of the people in that city are not "petty bourgeois". There is tremendous money in the city, but it is not even close to evenly distributed.

I'm not a New Yorker, but I am an American interested in societal order.

I'd much rather not have to test either of your theories. One thing I learned about civilian populations during the Iraq war, if you're going to force someone to get down off the fence, you'd better know what side of the fence they're gonna jump down on.

If you don't know, then for the love of whatever you deem divine, just leave them on the fence.

I would say that our leaders would quickly start to address some of the inequities throughout our legal system that allow people to be taken advantage of in egregious ways. But our leaders are not like that. They'll likely do nothing about a lot of the unfairness in the laws out there. There is in fact, unfortunately, a distinct possibility that many of our leaders went into politics to increase the unfairness.

I just kind of get the sense that we're at a point in our history where we're already sitting on a powder keg. We shouldn't play with fire while we're sitting here. Let's at least get rid of some of the powder first.

Yes, it is dangerous, and to be clear a very very bad direction, but here we are - the us political system is visibly collapsing in real time and this will continue.

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