Rising This Week: The political violence docket

From Luigi Mangione to Ryan Routh to Tyler Robinson, U.S. courts are teeming this week with cases involving attempted or completed political assassinations.

Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University shortly before he was killed. (Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images)

The week starts with three cases involving attempted or completed assassinations.

Journalism looking at the stories in isolation misses the bigger picture.

Across the United States this week, the most high-profile court cases are circling around a bloody theme.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot to death last week one day before opening statements in the trial of Ryan Routh, the man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump outside of his golf course last year. The second week of Routh’s trial continues in Florida on Monday.

On Tuesday, Utah authorities plan to reveal charges against Kirk’s accused killer Tyler Robinson on the same day that Luigi Mangione returns to criminal court in Manhattan over his alleged murder of late UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The last time that Mangione appeared in court, hundreds of his supporters cheered him on from outside the courthouse. Their applause rose up 15 stories high into the courtroom, where Mangione sat shackled at the wrists and ankles.

(Having sat in the courtroom that day, I can confirm the loud cheers were unmistakable, but they were so jarring for a murder trial that I initially questioned what I was hearing.)

That reaction is likely to become a regular feature of Mangione’s criminal case: “Free Luigi” organizers sent out a call to action to support Mangione outside the courthouse on Tuesday, styled as a “Protest for Healthcare Reform and Justice” for the accused murderer.

The throngs of Mangione supporters who cheer him outside court have the First Amendment right to do so, and the Constitution guarantees Mangione’s right to due process, presumption of innocence and right to counsel, who have been zealously defending him in state and federal court.

It’s also true that politically-motivated assassinations threaten all of those freedoms, tear at the fabric of a democratic society, and intimidate people from entering the public square — or a potentially hostile audience on a college campus.

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In 1911, the late playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote: “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”

Over the years, free speech advocates adapted the quotation into the slogan: “Murder is the ultimate form of censorship,” a sentiment often expressed whenever journalists or others are killed for their expression. Other forms of silencing follow when governments exploit political violence to advance their objectives of suppressing critics and dissent.

Before a suspect was even in custody, Donald Trump announced plans to use Kirk’s murder as an excuse to clamp down on the “radical left.” Kirk’s supporters have compiled a list of people accused of celebrating his death or criticizing him on social media, leading to a wave of firings across the country. One free-speech group described it as the “cancel culture part of the tragedy cycle.” Some people have been flagged for inclusion on that list for directly quoting Kirk’s statements about Black people, women, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The State Department’s deputy secretary of state announced on social media that the agency would review the legal status of immigrants “praising, mocking, or making light of” Kirk’s death, inviting the public to report on suspected offenders.

When Utah authorities release charges against Kirk’s suspected killer on Tuesday, critically analyzing the evidence will require resisting this climate of censorship. That means rejecting received wisdom, easy answers, and politically motivated reasoning. The public’s understanding of the fundamental facts of the case continues to evolve, including how Robinson came to be apprehended, what he believed, and whether he incriminated himself.

Take this reporting from The New York Times on Saturday:

“The police said that Mr. Robinson had implied or confessed that he committed the crime, and that he was then encouraged by a family member and family friend to turn himself in, which he did. He surrendered to the police in Southwestern Utah, where he lived, more than a three hours’ drive from the campus where the shooting took place.”

On Sunday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said in interviews that Robinson has not confessed and was not cooperating. Multiple news outlets reported that Robinson’s father turned in his son, but more detailed reporting from CNN suggests that the father urged his son to surrender to authorities after consulting with a youth pastor who works with law enforcement.

Despite the political right’s eagerness to blame the killing on “transgender ideology,” Gov. Cox said that Robinson’s transgender roommate and supposed romantic partner was “aghast” at the suspect’s alleged actions and has been “very cooperative” with the investigation.

Gov. Cox and other officials claim that Robinson had “leftist” ideas, but they have not specified what those beliefs were. The only public pieces of information come from a jumble of anti-fascist references, internet memes, and video game symbols etched on the suspect’s bullets. Officials’ impressions may or may not be correct, but commentators making broad assumptions either way would serve the public better by waiting for more information.

If Robinson pleads not guilty, prosecutors will bear the burden of proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The public trial for testing the allegations likely will reveal more about the motivations for Kirk’s killing than politicians’ and commentators’ snap judgments.

Mangione’s case challenges the public to grapple with why so many people have become so frustrated with the U.S. healthcare system that they openly and loudly support a man charged with murdering an insurance executive in an alleged crime of terrorism.

Courtrooms are where despised people and ideas are entitled to a zealous defense. They are the spaces where public sentiments and government narratives undergo testing by the rules of evidence and the crucible of cross-examination, and that makes would-be censors view them as dangerous places.

It’s why the political violence docket will require precise, professional, and unsentimental reporting.

Paid subscribers of All Rise News subscribers find more details about what’s going on in the courts and other forms of civic engagement in the weekly listings below.