A gun, a silencer and a notebook police found when they arrested Luigi Mangione at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, can be presented as evidence to a jury at his upcoming high-profile criminal trial, a state judge in Manhattan ruled Monday.
Some statements Mangione made to law enforcement after his arrest will also be allowed at trial, the judge decided. But jurors will not be allowed to see several other items Mangione had with him at the time of arrest, including a cellphone, a loaded magazine, a passport, a wallet and a computer chip, according to the ruling.
The ruling limits the case the Manhattan district attorney’s office can lay out against Mangione at trial, but still leaves in several significant pieces of evidence that could help to sway a jury.
A spokesperson for the DA’s office said prosecutors look forward to presenting their case in September. A spokesperson for Mangione’s defense attorney declined to comment.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state murder and weapons possession charges in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown hotel in 2024. The case has garnered international attention, inspiring admiration from critics of the U.S. health insurance industry and fear from the country’s executive class. Mangione’s alleged political motives, Ivy League bona fides and appearance have captivated a fan base so devoted that his lawyers have asked the public to stop sending him books in jail.
The Manhattan DA’s office has accused Mangione of shooting Thompson early on the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, when the CEO was in New York City for an investor conference. Prosecutors said Mangione fled the scene on a bike, hopped in a taxi and eventually left the city.
Several days later, local officers in Altoona arrested him at the McDonald’s after a manager called 911 and said someone in the restaurant “looks like the CEO shooter.”
The tactics of the Altoona police who arrested Mangione jeopardized several key pieces of evidence in the case, including the weapons and a hand-drawn map of Pennsylvania and Ohio with an accompanying note that said “keep momentum FBI slower at night.”
Mangione’s defense attorneys argued in court papers and at a dayslong hearing last December that the evidence should be thrown out because police searched the backpack containing Mangione’s belongings without a warrant. Prosecutors said the officers followed proper protocols and the evidence should be allowed.
Justice Gregory Carro said in court Monday that the items police found during an initial search of Mangione’s bag at the fast food restaurant should not be presented at trial.
“The search of the backpack at the McDonald’s was an improper, warrantless search," he said.
But Carro said a subsequent search at the local police station followed proper protocols, and evidence uncovered during that search could be presented at trial.
The judge issued a written decision with his ruling and spoke briefly in the courtroom. Supporters of Mangione and reporters filled nearly every seat of the large courtroom on the 13th floor of the Lower Manhattan courthouse. Mangione, who wore a blue suit, did not show much emotion during the hearing but spoke to his attorneys throughout the proceeding and briefly looked at the crowd when it came to a close.
Judge rules on evidence, statements
Monday’s ruling largely hinges on items seized during Mangione’s arrest, following a multi-day, highly publicized police pursuit. Five days after Thompson’s shooting, Altoona police got a phone call from an employee at the local McDonald’s who said a customer looked like the shooter. Police responded to the scene.
After seeing Mangione, an officer called his lieutenant to say he was “about 100% sure” that the person they had found was the suspect, according to Carro’s ruling. Mangione admitted to police that he had presented them with a fake ID and was taken into custody on forgery and tampering charges, the decision states.
Once Mangione was under arrest, police at the McDonald’s rifled through his backpack, saying they wanted to make sure there wasn’t a bomb inside, the ruling said. They found several items, including a loaf of bread, a cellphone, a passport, a wallet, a computer data chip, and a loaded magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear, according to the decision, which said police also inspected the passport and looked at two credit cards inside the wallet.
Going through the backpack at McDonald’s violated Mangione’s constitutional protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, Carro said in his ruling. The judge said Mangione was cooperating with law enforcement, and the backpack was out of his reach, so officers had no justification for a search without a warrant. He doubted that police were genuinely concerned about a bomb, because they searched small items where it would be unlikely to find an explosive and left some compartments “unopened and untouched.”
Back at the station, police conducted an inventory search of Mangione’s belongings. They removed all the items from his backpack and took photos of them. They also took pictures of every page in a notebook they found, according to the judge’s order. Carro said that search was allowed because it followed the Altoona police department’s standard procedure of cataloguing the belongings of people who are arrested.
Police then got a warrant to search the items for their investigation, which the judge said was properly obtained.
“ I'd say it's much more favorable to the prosecution,” Julie Rendelman, a defense attorney who previously worked as a homicide prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, said of the ruling. “The things that they need, which is the gun and the manifesto, come in, and that's really all they need.”
Carro also ruled Monday on whether jurors could hear several statements that Mangione made in the lead-up to his arrest and after. At McDonald’s, Mangione initially told police that his name was “Mark Rosario,” then later acknowledged that he had given them a fake ID, according to court papers. As the interaction continued, he asserted his right to remain silent.
While in custody following his arrest, he told a correction officer that he was a software engineer, that he had been arrested at a McDonald’s, and that he had been carrying a backpack with a 3D-printed pistol and a magazine, according to the decision. Mangione also allegedly said that he was carrying foreign money and facing accusations that he was a foreign agent. The correction officer testified in court that Mangione “blurted” out these pieces of information without being questioned.
Several days later, the ruling states, Mangione spoke with another correction officer about his travels to Vietnam and Thailand, the health care system and how the media was portraying him. He allegedly told the officer that he had heard he was being compared to Ted Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber,” and that he “wanted to make a statement to the public.”
Carro said statements that Mangione made at McDonald’s before he was in custody will be allowed as evidence at trial, but not statements that he made in response to police questioning after he was in custody. The judge said he would allow jurors to hear Mangione’s statements to correction officers while he was incarcerated, because they were “spontaneous” or part of “casual conversation.”
Mangione is slated to stand trial in state court this September. He also faces federal stalking charges and is expected to go to trial in that case later.
Judges have dismissed the most serious charges against Mangione in both state and federal court, including state terrorism charges and a federal firearms charge that could have resulted in the death penalty.
