The source material in my remix video titled “Justice for all?” is clips from news broadcasts where the news anchor explicitly states a criminal’s sentence. Since the crimes I chose were recent (past ten years) I broke the rule of including source material from three different time periods. My critique is based on current events such as the CEO assassination, so it was unnecessary to include footage from other periods. While I was certainly not the first person to realize the clear double standard here, my remix is original and creative because it is one of the first video form critiques on the matter. My main method is juxtaposition, so I started with a news segment that covers the news of United States Attorney General Pam Bondi recommending that Luigi Mangione get the death penalty. I then chose to keep a clip from that same newscast where a lawyer describes when the death penalty is an option in certain crimes. I chose to cut where she said “and when the crime is especially heinous” and add a record-scratching sound effect. The clips that follow afterward are newscasters describing crimes that the average person would generally find heinous: school shootings and police brutality.
Those criminals, however, did not get the death penalty and in most cases received plea deals to avoid it. I also chose to not add transitions between the clips, because none of the transitions across editing platforms felt appropriate for the subject material.
The abrupt cuts also serve to put the viewer on edge and force them to recontextualize each different news clip. The juxtaposition of the Luigi Mangione clips with the clips of the school shooters and Breonna Taylor is meant to make the viewer consider why a criminal who has killed far more people than Luigi Mangione isn’t subject to the same punishment. At the beginning of the video, I overlaid the audio of a correspondent saying “He’s facing the death penalty as a possible deterrent to putting other CEOs in danger like this…” onto a photo of the surveillance footage from the assassination. Later on, I overlaid that audio over a clip of newscasters saying the 2019 Walmart mass shooter avoided the death penalty. The clip is intended to make viewers consider that CEO safety is prioritized over the safety of everyday people. Additionally, I use a clip of a newscaster reading the words “as part of President Trump’s ‘Keep America Safe’ initiative” over the news clips of Breonna Taylor.
My remix is a cultural commentary on who gets justice in our country. It is also a commentary on Donald Trump’s facade of keeping America safe. During the Walmart, UNCC, and Parkland mass shootings, Donald Trump was the president. That means he appointed the Attorney General, who could have recommended those punishments since those crimes are felonies. However, that never happened. None of the states where those shootings occurred, Texas, North Carolina, or Florida, have abolished the death penalty. Breonna Taylor was also murdered during the first Trump administration, when lockdown started on March 13th, 2020. Initially, Trump offered his condolences to Taylor’s family, before later praising the Kentucky Attorney General for “doing a terrific job” after the charges were dropped. A second officer did get charges for firing a stray shot into the next-door apartment, though. Derek Chauvin is the only police officer in my memory who received any charges, and Trump weighed in on the civil unrest by tweeting “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” encouraging more violence. Make no mistake, the Trump administration didn’t recommend the death penalty for Luigi Mangione out of empathy for Brian Thompson or his family, but because the crime threatened the social order in the United States. Namely, the wealthy social order many politicians find themselves part of.
While I am not a proponent of the death penalty, many victims of mass crimes like shootings define justice as the shooter receiving the death penalty for the deaths they caused. I’d also venture to say that most Americans do not think the death penalty is an unreasonable punishment for school shooters, and some people may agree that it is appropriate for police officers who kill innocent people. My critique is that a victim of a crime must be a wealthy man in power to receive swift justice. Children who are murdered in school and black men and women killed by police officers do not get the same type of justice. When police officers stand trial for police brutality, the death penalty is rarely ever mentioned. No police officer has ever received capital punishment for murdering an innocent person. In fact, most police officers in those types of cases never get charged, as is the case with Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown’s killers, for example. The remix features a video where the officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s murder get all charges dropped, even though they murdered someone and falsified a warrant to come to her house. Not only is this country making a statement about who deserves justice, but they are also making an implicit statement about whose life has inherent value, and who the state views as expendable in the process of upholding the social order. To keep things “the way they’ve always been” where those in power are comfortable and don’t fear an uprising, unfavorable groups are subjugated in the process. For example, useful gun control is in the people’s best interest, but not in the politician’s best interest. Where else would they get millions of dollars if not for the gun lobby?
Sources:
ABC News, dir. 2023. School Shooter Ethan Crumbley Is Sentenced to Life without Parole. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2bBOLeX2TY.
CBS Mornings, dir. 2025. AG Bondi Calls for Death Penalty for Luigi Mangione, Accused of UnitedHealthcare CEO Murder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_-fAw544k8.
CBS News, dir. 2025. DOJ Seeking Death Penalty in Luigi Mangione Case, Bondi Says. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW4SYECj0hc.
“Everytown Research – EveryStat.” n.d. EveryStat.Org. Accessed April 8, 2025. https://everystat.org.
“Federal Judge Dismisses Felony Charges against Two Officers in Breonna Taylor Case – YouTube.” n.d. Accessed April 8, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQuOX47efPI.
Inside Edition, dir. 2022. Parkland School Shooter Nikolas Cruz Gets Life Sentence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlbkIGxK_h8.
KTSM 9 NEWS, dir. 2025. Victims’ Family Reacts to Walmart Gunman Not Facing Death Penalty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0D5vaRp04.
“Luigi Mangione’s Hard Turn into a CEO Murder Suspect | AP News.” n.d. Accessed April 8, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-shooting-luigi-mangione-10ee2f70cd843a27940a9cf1a06edf55.
Song:
Capcut song titled “News/Report/Serious 55(1531537)” by user Takashi 02:27
