Luigi Mangione’s next court hearing could last all week — here’s why

MANHATTAN (CN) — Luigi Mangione is due back in court on Monday for a trio of evidence suppression hearings that could stretch deep into the week.

The 27-year-old murder suspect last appeared in September, when New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro dismissed terrorism charges against him that stemmed from the Dec. 4, 2024, murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Unlike that hearing, which clocked in at under an hour, these upcoming ones will prompt testimony from numerous witnesses and last several days.

One of the hearings due for next week is a Mapp hearing, named for the landmark Supreme Court case Mapp v. Ohio, which will determine whether physical evidence recovered from the scene of Mangione’s arrest will be admissible in court.

Mangione’s defense team is looking to prove that everything responding officers found in his backpack — including a 3D-printed gun, silencer, purported journal writings and electronic devices — should be inadmissible since the cops didn’t have a warrant to search it when they arrested him.

According to veteran New York City criminal defense attorney Ron Kuby, police officers can search anything within a “grabbable distance” of an arrested suspect.

“It’s for the protection of the police, that’s the underlying rationale,” Kuby told Courthouse News. “They can search you, they can search what you have on you and they can search something that is within a grabbable distance.”

But Mangione’s lawyers note that by the time police officers confronted him in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days had passed since the shooting.

“Police had no reason to believe that the alleged shooter was still armed,” the defense attorneys wrote in a court filing from May.

Even after Mangione was cuffed and led out of the restaurant, his lawyers claim the officers continued searching his backpack. One of the officers can purportedly be heard on body-worn camera footage that she was looking for a bomb, which Mangione’s team argues was a fabricated justification for the warrantless search.

“This made-up bomb claim further shows that even she believed at the time that there were constitutional issues with her search forcing her to attempt to salvage this debacle by making this spurious claim,” the defense attorneys wrote.

It’s a key issue for Mangione’s defense, as prosecutors say the backpack contained not only the murder weapon, but also a batch of journal entries seemingly confessing to the crime. One of the entries made reference to wanting to “wack” a health care CEO. Another said that such a killing would shed light on “a company that literally extracts human life force for money.”

Mangione is requesting that prosecutors don’t read the contents of those notes at next week’s hearing to avoid “profound” prejudice.

Kuby believes the police officers indeed made a mistake searching the backpack when they did, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the judge will deem such key pieces of evidence inadmissible. The state can make the argument for an inevitable discovery exception, which prevents certain evidence from being tossed even if it is obtained illegally so long as prosecutors can prove it would have been discovered lawfully during discovery.

“Courts rely heavily on that exception when police engage in unlawful searches in order to justify the admission of crucially important evidence,” Kuby said. “This is the shoal on which many a promising suppression motion crashes on the rocks.”

Mangione’s team is also looking to suppress statements he made to responding officers during his arrest with a Huntley hearing. He claims that the cops “deliberately and strategically” swarmed him inside the McDonald’s and detained him without reading him his Miranda warnings.

“By intentionally blocking Mr. Mangione’s ability to move past them, the patrolmen made clear to Mr. Mangione — or anyone else who was in his position — that he was not free to leave,” his lawyers wrote.

And the judge approved the defense’s request for a third hearing — a Mosley hearing — in which prosecutors will have to prove the reliability of witness identifications. That might take place at a later date, though, as Mangione claims in his latest defense filing that prosecutors are looking to push it.

Throughout next week’s hearings, prosecutors may call some of the responding officers who arrested Mangione last December. The defense is seeking to call two Altoona cops: Garrett Trent and Randy Miller.

According to former Brooklyn prosecutor Sarena Townsend, now the owner of Townsend Law in New York City, “anybody who recovered property, anybody who took a statement from him and anybody who made an identification of Luigi — including through surveillance video,” may be called to testify.

“The prosecution is going to try to limit the number of people who testify as much as possible because they want to avoid the possibility of contradictory testimony,” Townsend said.

Even if Mangione’s legal team is unsuccessful at getting any evidence tossed, Townsend added that these hearings are a key opportunity for the defense to get a glimpse into how prosecutors will present their case and how certain witnesses will testify.

The amount of evidence being contested means that the process is likely to take several days. If the hearings stretch into Thursday, then Mangione will be spending the one-year anniversary of Thompson’s killing in court.

The defense team seems to be prepared for the whole week. They made a wardrobe request to the Bureau of Prisons last week for their client to receive two suits, three sweaters, three pairs of pants and five pairs of socks.

Mangione is also facing federal charges for Thompson’s murder. But because the government is seeking the death penalty in that case, the federal trial is likely several years away. Meanwhile, Mangione’s state-level murder charges are expected to go to a jury next year.

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