All right. Let's begin today's discussion over in New York, where you just had a state judge

dismissed two of the terrorist charges against Luigi Mangione, which sounds bad, but in order

to understand the full context, this action does require a bit of explanation. You see, the prosecutors

in this case, they were arguing that Luigi's actions, they met the threshold for domestic terrorism.

And to that end, the state prosecutors, they wrote the following in a recent court filing.

Quote, Mangione's intentions were obvious from his acts, but his writings served to make those

intentions explicit. His writings convey one clear message that the murder of Brian Thompson was intended to

bring about revolutionary change to the health care industry. Law enforcement indicates that the

words delay, deny, and depose that were etched into the bullet casings echoed a phrase commonly

used to describe how major insurance companies avoid paying claims. And so that's what these state prosecutors

were arguing. However, New York judge Gregory Carroll, he ruled that although Luigi's actions were

obviously ideologically motivated, they didn't actually meet the threshold to warrant a terrorism

charge being lobbied against them. That's because under New York State law,

the word terrorism is defined in a lot more of a narrow sense than how it's typically used by you and I colloquially in everyday speech. According to New York State Penal Code,

you can see it up on your screen, subsection 490.25, it says that an act is terrorism only if it's committed with intent to intimidate

a coercive civilian population, influence government policy, or affect government conduct by murder,

assassination, or kidnapping. Basically, the prosecutors had to prove that Luigi had an intent to

achieve one of those three goals with the murder of Brian Thompson.

But the judge in the case, he found that the prosecutors failed to present concrete evidence

that Luigi was attempting to do one of those things when he killed Brian Thompson,

either to coerce a civilian population, to influence government policy,

and or to affect government conduct.

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