Somewhere within Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, which holds high-profile prisoners such as Sam Bankman-Fried and Sean “Diddy” Combs, lies inmate 52503-511. Better known as Luigi Mangione, he stands accused of assassinating UnitedHealth Group (UHG) CEO Brian Thompson in broad daylight last December. For months after his capture, the trial proceeded normally, even as Mangione became a rallying point for opponents of the health insurance industry.

April 1, however, everything changed. Dissatisfied that New York prosecutors were only seeking a life sentence for Mangione, the Attorney General of the United States issued a directive through the Department of Justice ordering them to seek the death penalty instead.

While it’s not uncommon for murder suspects to face the death penalty, this feels like something else. The system has special reasons to want Mangione dead, and the fake “morals” it always spouts to justify its actions are looking increasingly hollow.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s directive describes Thompson’s killing as “a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.” That may be so, but what assassin could possibly be more cold-blooded than the health insurance industry itself? Research from the Harvard Medical School suggests that nearly 45,000 Americans die every year due to health insurance issues. As America’s largest healthcare conglomerate, UHG is particularly notorious for fraudulently denying care to its customers, often ignoring its own health professionals to do so.

To be clear, Brian Thompson was not personally responsible for this system. I do not believe that he deserved to die. But if Thompson shouldn’t have died, why should Mangione?

This is bigger than just health insurance — the entire system runs on double standards. A normal person caught selling drugs on the street could be imprisoned for years, and yet the billionaire Sackler family, which knowingly marketed highly addictive opioids for decades, walks free. An accountant who embezzles funds from a corporation can be fined and jailed, but the Pentagon can get away with failing seven audits in a row. A single mom on food stamps is a “welfare queen”, but Fortune 500 companies can expect government bailouts whenever the stock market crashes.

This system is not natural, and it wasn’t an accident. It was created, and it can be destroyed.

Bondi’s directive continues, almost as an afterthought, that the murder was “an act of political violence.” Personally, I think the “political” part of the violence is what really bothers her.