During a three-week hearing that ended Thursday, prosecutors and lawyers for Luigi Mangione, who has been charged in the killing of a health care executive in Midtown Manhattan, focused largely on when and how his backpack had been searched when he was arrested in Pennsylvania last year.
But the bag’s contents — ammunition, a homemade silencer, a red notebook, handwritten notes and a 3-D-printed gun — are just a portion of the evidence that prosecutors have collected.
They say they have linked Mr. Mangione’s DNA to items discarded by the gunman during his flight from the shooting. They have a flash drive that was on a necklace that Mr. Mangione wore when he was arrested. And there is the fake New Jersey license that Mr. Mangione gave officers, which prosecutors say matches one used at an Upper West Side hostel where the gunman stayed.
The judge in the case, Justice Gregory Carro, said he would decide in May what evidence can be presented in Mr. Mangione’s state trial. But even if he excludes some evidence, a separate federal prosecution still looms. No dates have been set for either trial.
If the backpack cannot be used in state court, the prosecution would still have a case, said Cheryl Bader, a Fordham University law professor. However, it could make what she called a “slam dunk” more challenging: Prosecutors would have to piece together a puzzle.
Judges are often reluctant to suppress evidence, she said, “but the defense does seem to have some potential arguments here that the police played fast and loose with Mangione’s constitutional rights.”
Mr. Mangione, 27, is charged in the killing of Brian Thompson, then the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, one of America’s largest insurers. Mr. Thompson was shot while walking into a Hilton hotel on West 54th Street in Manhattan to prepare for an investor gathering. Mr. Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., five days later.
For Mr. Mangione’s lawyers, the hours after the Altoona police encountered their client have become a crucial part of the case. They dissected those hours over eight days of testimony, during which both sides appeared to be speaking to the public as much as to Justice Carro.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office called 17 witnesses, mostly officers who had gone to the McDonald’s, to argue that the evidence was admissible.
On the morning of Dec. 9, 2024, Mr. Mangione carried his black backpack into the McDonald’s and ordered a steak, egg and cheese McMuffin and a hash brown. As he was sitting down and scrolling on a laptop, officers responding to a tip that he looked like the Midtown gunman approached.
Within a half-hour, after he had given them the fake license, the police handcuffed Mr. Mangione. As he was led outside, body camera footage shows two officers searching the bag on a table. They pulled out a hoagie, a bag of slice bread and an ammunition magazine wrapped in wet underwear.
Officers searched the backpack again at the Altoona police station, where one officer announced that she had found a handgun, according to body camera footage. A supervisor instructed her to move the bag away from where Mr. Mangione was being processed and into a hallway. The officer then began pulling out more items, including the silencer. The police later searched the bag for a third time.
Because the officers had no warrant, Mr. Mangione’s lawyers argued during the hearing, the items should not be allowed at trial. The police also failed to read Mr. Mangione his Miranda rights when required and ignored his request to remain silent by continuing to ask him questions, the lawyers said.
The Altoona police took over seven hours after the first search to request a warrant and transfer the evidence to the New York Police Department, the defense said. All of that evidence should be considered “illegally obtained,” his lawyers have argued.
In court, Mr. Mangione’s lawyers pointed to moments when officers were recorded in body camera footage asking colleagues if they should get a warrant before rifling through the backpack.
Altoona officers defended their actions in court, testifying they followed Pennsylvania law and their department’s policies.
After Mr. Mangione was collared, they said, a “search incident to an arrest” allows officers to check him and the belongings that are within his reach. They are also allowed to inventory Mr. Mangione’s possessions, they said.
The defense is facing an uphill battle, according to David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor.
Regardless of the law, Mr. Harris said, the practical reality is that “the more serious the charge, the less likely the suppression motion is to succeed.”
And intense public focus on the case, he said, makes it even less likely.
However, the revelation at the hearing that officers selected pages of Mr. Mangione’s journal as part of a so-called inventory search and sent them to New York officers en route to Altoona could be an “area of concern” for prosecutors, said Steven L. Chanenson, a Villanova University law professor.
In Pennsylvania, so-called inventory searches are used to catalog items to keep officers safe, protect a suspect’s property and avoid claims of theft, he said.
Taking pictures of writings inside a journal to assist New York detectives would go beyond that scope, Mr. Chanenson said.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
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