Luigi Mangione, who is charged with murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, will be back at Manhattan criminal court on Monday for two suppression hearings that his defense attorneys have requested in an attempt to limit the evidence that will be admitted at trial. The defense is seeking to call two witnesses as part of the hearings, which could potentially last several days.

As the Sun reported, the last time the 27-year old Ivy League graduate appeared in court was in September, when the presiding judge, Gregory Carro, dismissed the two terrorism charges Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, had brought against Mr. Mangione, including a first-degree murder count that could have put him behind bars for the rest of his life. 

Mr. Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty, is still in serious trouble. He is charged with second-degree murder, for which he faces a sentence of 25 years to life, among nine other counts. He is also charged with the same crime in federal court, where prosecutors are seeking something New York’s prosecutors cannot: the death penalty.

Monday’s court appearance marks almost exactly one year since the day Thompson was killed on a Midtown Manhattan street. In the early morning hours of December 4, 2024, Thompson was shot in the back as he was on his way to an investor conference at the Hilton Hotel. The Twin Cities-based father of two died at the hospital about half an hour later. The killer fled the scene immediately, triggering a manhunt that lasted five days. 

Defense attorneys argue that when Mr. Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s outside Altoona, a Blair County, Pennsylvania town, five days after the murder, the arresting officers seized evidence unlawfully, “because law enforcement conducted a warrantless search of Mr. Mangione’s backpack in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights after he was already handcuffed and surrounded by ten police officers,” the attorneys wrote in a motion filed on May 1. 

Inside the backpack, the arresting officers allegedly found a 3D printed gun, which according to the New York Police Department, matched the shell casings retrieved at the crime scene. Another important item the arresting officers collected was a notebook with handwritten notes, which allegedly provide a confession for the murder.   

In a recent motion filed on November 25, defense attorneys asked the judge to restrict prosecutors, and any witnesses they may call, from displaying or referring to the contents of that notebook, and to show only the outside of the notebook. 

“We ask that the Court bar the prosecution from introducing the contents of the notebook or any writings into evidence at the hearing, as doing so would make their contents public and would irreparably prejudice Mr. Mangione at his multiple upcoming trials,” the defense wrote. 

The attorneys argued that prejudice is a key concern, as any statements made during the hearings in state court could influence potential jurors, who may later be called for the federal death penalty trial.   

“Any statement, document, or allegation – true or not – is rapidly disseminated by traditional media, social media, and law enforcement sources. If the contents of these writings become public, they are virtually certain to reach potential jurors in this and in the parallel federal prosecution, including prospective federal jurors who will ultimately decide whether to impose the death penalty,” the attorneys argued. 

They doubled down, writing that “If the writings are publicly revealed at the hearing but ultimately suppressed, the harm cannot be undone. The prejudice would be insurmountable – at both the state and federal levels – where the stakes for Mr. Mangione could not be higher.”  

The defense team is lead by Karen Friedman Agnifilo, and includes her husband Marc Agnifilo, who recently scored a major win in the sex trafficking trial of the disgraced music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs, where his client was acquitted of the most serious charges, which carried a potential sentence of life in prison. The third attorney on the team is Jacob Kaplan. 

The three attorneys further requested that the judge ban prosecutors and witnesses from characterizing the notebook as a “manifesto,” a word they described as “a prejudicial, invented law-enforcement label.”       

Starting on Monday, the defense team is expected to argue two suppression hearings, a Mapp and a Huntley hearing. In 1961, the Supreme Court established in its landmark ruling, Mapp v. Ohio, that evidence gathered through an unconstitutional search and seizure cannot be used against a defendant in a state court. 

Four years later, in 1965, New York Court of Appeals ruled in People v. Huntley that prosecutors must prove that a confession was made voluntarily before it can be used at trial. Defense attorneys argue that the arresting officers at the McDonald’s failed to read Mr. Mangione his Miranda rights before they asked him to identify himself.

When confronted by the officers at the McDonald’s, Mr. Mangione allegedly provided a fake ID, a New Jersey driving license in the name of Mark Rosario. The same license, New York investigation had previously confirmed, was used by the suspected shooter to check into a youth hostel in Manhattan’s Bloomingdale neighborhood on November 30, four days before Thompson’s murder. 

Referring to footage obtained from body-worn cameras, the defense demonstrated that the arresting officers questioned Mr. Mangione for almost twenty minutes before they read him his Miranda warnings, soliciting the answer that he was not Mr. Rosario. Mr. Mangione  effectively admitted to having provided a fake ID, before telling the police his real birthday. Therefore, the defense concluded, these statements, including providing false identification, should be omitted at trial.

It’s unclear which witnesses the prosecution intends to call, and which of Mr. Mangione’s statements they wish to include. In Tuesday’s filing, defense attorneys noted that ten statements “attributable to Mr. Mangione” did not have “a corresponding witness on the District Attorney’s witness list.” The defense said it asked prosecutors if they still intended to offer those statements at trial. “The District Attorney has not responded to counsel’s email,” the defense wrote, seeking clarification.  

Defense attorneys also said that they want to call two officers from the Altoona Police Department, Cpl. Garrett Trent and Patrolman Randy Miller, to the witness stand next week.   

Because Mr. Mangione is being held at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, a federal facility, he needed to get permission to appear in civil clothing to his state hearings from the judge who oversees his federal trial. 

That judge, Margaret Garnett, granted Mr. Mangione the request and allowed: Two suits, three shirts, three sweaters, three pairs of pants, five pairs of socks and one pair of shoes (without laces). The amount of clothing suggests that the hearing may last several days.