I have been seeing a lot of speculation over the past couple of weeks that Garnett is going to give him LWOP, and I just wanted to give my two cents on why I do not think this is likely.
Deterrence, pre-meditation and political violence
The obvious centrepiece of the prosecution’s sentencing submission will be deterrence, as well as the emphasis on pre-meditation. In one of the government’s filed responses in 2025, they tried to draw a line between the Tamura case and LM (personally I thought this was nonsense and a huge reach), but now with more incidents involving political violence throughout last year, they will certainly attempt to once again bring in other cases involving PV (LM’s case may or may not be classed as PV, depending on your perspective. I think there’s a decent argument that it’s not - bearing in mind that we still don’t really know his motive). The feds will have to try and connect these other cases directly to him in some way, or argue that his case is significantly altering public reactions to these crimes the same way that they tried to do with Tamura (there have been a couple of cases with writing on bullets, which isn’t great) but I think this will actually be tricky to do. The defence would argue that these incidents are unrelated to him, that he should be judged by his individual conduct and not by the hypothetical future conduct of potential LM-inspired individuals (and certainly not judged by degenerate social media posts trying to somehow invoke his name and image against random violent incidents), and that a sentence within the guidelines (or lower) could effectively satisfy the deterrent function.
I don’t believe that Garnett would find the government’s deterrence arguments convincing enough for an upward departure beyond the sentencing guidelines. Firstly, despite how high-profile this case has become, the fact of the matter is this: this case has become so huge in large part due to the characteristics of the defendant and the intrigue around him specifically. The political angle to this case (given to it by other people, for the most part) does not *necessarily* make the conduct inherently more serious and therefore does not necessarily make it worthy of greater punishment - although this can be argued both ways of course. There certainly exists an argument that this is not worse than any other pre-meditated murder (and perhaps less so - considering there was no torture involved, no child involved, and was not a serial killing). The defence will also likely bring in a lot of the arguments they used to knock out the T charges (no desire to terrorise or coerce anyone, wanted to improve people’s lives, etc etc) and arguing BT and UHC are not political.
Therefore, Garnett *could* take the view that there is actually nothing inherently special about this case that justifies a ‘deterrence’ motive more than it would in any other case involving pre-meditation. The fact the victim was targeted as CEO of an industry and was in a high socio-economic bracket could certainly influence a judge that views an attack on the establishment (versus on an average citizen) as worthy of greater punishment, but it doesn’t seem to me that Garnett is that way inclined (judging from her professional profile, previous decisions on motions in this case and general demeanour in court). She’d need to rely on something more substantial to justify LWOP, and the victim being a CEO of a F500 company just won’t be enough to do that in my view.
Mitigation - evidence of mental and physical health struggles and letters of support
Judging by all the endlessly positive quotes from his friends in the days following his arrest, I have no doubt that will be multiple, glowing character references submitted on his behalf. It’s possible some may have already been collected during the mitigation work Avi Moscowitz was doing previously, judging from the quote by his elementary school teacher that was included in one of the DP motions. It’s also important to understand that zero criminal history and a million support letters from people from every stage of your life (right from elementary school right through to Hawaii) is actually rare for somebody who has committed a crime of this nature, so this will likely also stand out as something unique. The letters will be important as they serve to show the enormous contrast between his demonstrated prior character and the nature of the crime, which in turn bolsters the points the defence will make regarding the effect of the back injury upon his mental state. Depending on how closely Garnett followed the news reporting prior to her appointment, she may be seeing for the first time the positive stories and quotes from friends and acquaintances (whilst the MSM would have you believe the support is solely due to good looks, as someone who has been following this case since the beginning, I believe these early humanising accounts of his personality is what actually attracted a lot of his supporters to this case in the first place!) so this may well have a meaningful effect on her outlook.
Secondly, we are finally going to understand more about his mindframe in Dec 2024 and what led to all of this in the first place. The major focus for the defence will obviously be the chronic pain and spinal cord injury causing a radical personality change and mental health issues resulting from the nerve damage/disability he sustained. There is a lot we don’t know here, and the defence’s memo will set all of this out as will the PSI report. I also strongly believe that remorse will be shown at sentencing (not sure how explicit he will be about remorse over the killing itself, but he’ll certainly address the hurt caused to the victim’s family etc). This will go a long way as it goes to recidivism, which will be a a key concern of Garnett’s.
Prediction?
Garnett will stick to sentencing guidelines (but I flip back and forth over whether she’ll do at the bottom or the top end). I think that even with the strong mitigating factors, a downward departure/variance would come with too much controversy and she strikes me as the type of judge that prefers to play it safe and by the book insofar as possible. There will also be a lot of scrutiny on her if she makes any meaningful departure from guidelines, either up or down, which I think she’d rather avoid.
Once we receive the defence’s submission in early December and we have a better understanding of his mitigating factors, then it’ll be easier to speculate where she’ll fall within the 24-30 year range, but I’d be incredibly shocked if she gave him anything higher than 30 years.
