Some Big Wins, Some Losses for Mangione at Evidence Suppression Hearing

The judge overseeing the state case against the man accused of gunning down the CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione, on Monday partly granted and partly denied the defense’s motion to suppress crucial evidence at his upcoming trial. The 3-D printed handgun and a notebook containing disparaging comments about the health industry will be permitted into evidence, while a loaded magazine, Mr. Mangione’s passport, and wallet will be suppressed. “The search of the backpack at the McDonald’s was an improper warrantless search,” New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro told the parties on Monday. “The subsequent search of the backpack at the station was a valid inventory search,” Judge Carro added. Mr. Mangione, who attended Monday’s hearing, wore a navy blue suit and a button down shirt. He appeared calm as he turned around to the packed courtroom that was filled with about a dozen of his supporters. Prosecutors will not be able to enter the items seized from Mr. Mangione’s backpack at the McDonald’s at Altoona, a Blair County, Pennsylvania, town where he was arrested five days after the CEO was killed in New York City. But they will be able to enter the items seized at the subsequent search at the police station. In another victory for the defense, the judge also granted that the statements Mr. Mangione made before he was read his Miranda rights will be suppressed at trial. This includes the explanation he gave to officers of why he had provided them with a fake driver’s license when he was first asked for identification. Prosecutors will be able to admit statements from later questioning, when Mr. Mangione was in custody, Judge Carro ruled. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has charged Mr. Mangione with second-degree murder, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, and other firearm offenses for killing Thompson. Mr. Mangione pleaded not guilty. In the early morning hours of December 4, 2024, Thompson was shot as he was on his way to an investor conference at the New York Hilton. The Twin Cities-based father of two died at the hospital about half an hour later. The killer fled the scene on a bicycle, triggering a nationwide manhunt. Five days after the shooting Mr. Mangione, a high school valedictorian and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania who was born into an influential family outside Baltimore, was arrested at the McDonald’s located about 270 miles west of New York City. A customer at the McDonald’s noticed that a young man, who had removed his face mask to eat his breakfast, resembled the suspect whose photographs had been plastered across national media by the New York Police Department. The customer informed the manager at the fast food restaurant, who called the police. When arresting officers arrived, they began to question Mr. Mangione, but did not immediately provide him his Miranda rights, body cameras and surveillance footage from McDonald’s showed. One of the officers approached Mr. Mangione, who was sitting near the bathrooms in the back of the restaurant, and asked him for his name. Mr. Mangione replied his name was Mark Rosario and showed the officers a New Jersey driver’s license with that name.The same license, New York investigation had previously confirmed, was used by the suspected shooter to check into a youth hostel in the Manhattan neighborhood of Bloomingdale four days before Thompson’s murder. When the officers ran the ID, the report came back that the ID was fraudulent. Once the backup arrived, the officers told Mr. Mangione that he was under police investigation and asked for his real name. This time, Mr. Mangione told the officers that his name was Luigi Nicholas Mangione and that he was born on May 6, 1998. Another officer asked him why he had lied about his name originally, and Mr. Mangione replied, “I clearly shouldn’t have.” He added that he gave the false name because it was on the ID card he carried.Because officers had still not read the suspect his Miranda rights at that point, these statements will not be permitted into evidence at the upcoming trial. After the officers ran Mr. Mangione’s name and birthday, they administered his Miranda rights, and warned that anything he said could be used against him in a court of law. Officers then began to search his backpack, where they found a loaded magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear as well as a Faraday bag, which blocks cell signals, containing his passport, a phone, a wallet, and a computer chip. Defense attorneys argued in their motions to suppress the evidence that the search was unlawful because the officers did not have a warrant. Prosecutors pushed back, arguing the arresting officers wanted to ensure the suspect carried no weapons or explosives that could endanger the public or the officers. Judge Carro ruled that the backpack posed no danger because it was not within the “defendant’s immediate control” and not within a “grabbable area,” meaning not close enough for the suspect to reach it. He also found the officers didn’t actually search every pocket of the backpack, writing, “If it was a search for a bomb, it was an incomplete one, as they left compartments unopened and untouched.” Therefore, all items seized at the McDonald’s will be suppressed; however, officers also searched the backpack once they arrived at the precinct. That’s where they found a 3-D printed handgun, a silencer, more than $7,000 in cash, and a red notebook that contained disparaging comments about the healthcare industry, which prosecutors suggested offers a clear motive for the murder. The judge decided the search at the police precinct was lawful because it followed the inventory protocols of the Altoona Police Department. It was an “inventory search,” he reasoned, “conducted according to familiar routine procedure,” also intended to “protect the property of the defendant, protect the police against any claim of lost property, and protect police and others from dangerous instruments.” Judge Carro’s decision “made sense,” a criminal defense attorney, Thomas Maronick, from Baltimore told The New York Sun in a phone interview. “It was the right call that the manifesto and the gun are going to be admissible,” he said, adding that “it was a partial win for the defense, because obviously anything excluded is helpful to the defense.” He noted the suppression of the loaded magazine that was also found in Mr. Mangione’s backpack was especially significant. “The magazine being kept out is huge,” Mr. Maronick said. “At the end of the day, they still have to put a gun in the hand of Mr. Mangione. And if they have a loaded magazine that can be tied to it, they can say, ‘his intent was to kill and we found a magazine.’” Investigators from the New York Police Department said shell casings collected at the crime scene matched the 9-millimeter handgun Mr. Mangione had in his possession at the time of his arrest. But the criminal defense attorney cautioned, “It doesn’t necessarily prove that gun fired those casings. It could have been another gun of a similar nature.”Mr. Maronick is acquainted with the Mangione family, which traces its prominence in Baltimore back to its patriarch, the defendant’s grandfather Nicholas Mangione. In 1988, Nicholas Mangione, a real estate developer who died in 2008, bought the a.m. radio station WCBM, where Mr. Maronick hosted an independent radio show for 20 years. Mr. Maronick said he would sometimes meet Mangione family members “at station events” and the owner gave him a lot of freedom to bring in guests of differing political views. The attorney recalled that people in Baltimore were very surprised that a member of “this well-known family had been accused of such a heinous crime.” Because Mr. Mangione also faces charges for the same crime in federal court, he is currently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and not on Riker’s Island. Mr. Mangione’s next hearing is scheduled at the Southern District of New York on June 15, when the parties will discuss the jury questionnaire for the federal trial.

Some Big Wins, Some Losses for Mangione at Evidence Suppression Hearing

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