Luigi Mangione is due back in court on Tuesday for the second day of a hearing in his bid to bar New York prosecutors from using evidence that they say links him to last yearâs killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The pretrial hearing in Mangioneâs state murder case kicked off Monday with prosecutors playing surveillance videos of the Dec. 4, 2024, killing and security footage of his arrest five days later at a McDonaldâs in Pennsylvania.
Mangione, 27, gripped a pen in his right hand, making a fist at times, as prosecutors played the audio of a 911 call from a McDonaldâs manager relaying concerns from customers that Mangione looked like the suspect in Thompsonâs death.
Mangioneâs lawyers are asking Judge Gregory Carro to block prosecutors from showing or telling jurors about items seized from his backpack during his arrest, including a 9 mm handgun that prosecutors say matches the one used in the killing and a notebook in which they say Mangione described his intent to âwackâ a health insurance executive.
The defense contends the items should be excluded because police didn’t have a warrant to search his backpack. They also want to suppress some statements Mangione made to law enforcement personnel, such as allegedly giving a false name, because officers started asking questions before telling him he had a right to remain silent.
Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. The state charges carry the possibility of life in prison, while federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Neither trial has been scheduled. The next hearing in the federal case is scheduled for Jan. 9.
Mangioneâs lawyers want to bar evidence from both cases, but this weekâs hearing pertains only to the state case.
Five witnesses testified on Monday, including a Pennsylvania prison officer who said Mangione told him that at the time of his arrest he had a backpack with foreign currency and a 3D-printed pistol.
Another prison officer said his superintendent told him Mangione was being held under constant watch because the facility âdid not want an Epstein-style situation,â referring to Jeffrey Epsteinâs 2019 jail suicide.
More law enforcement officers are expected to take the witness stand on Tuesday.
Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind as the executive walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for his companyâs annual investor conference. Prosecutors say âdelay,â âdenyâ and âdeposeâ were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
Mangione was arrested as he ate breakfast at a McDonaldâs in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan after the restaurantâs manager told a 911 dispatcher, âI have a customer here that some other customers were suspicious of â that he looks like the CEO shooter from New York.â
The manager told the dispatcher that she searched online for photos of the suspect that police disseminated. But, as Mangione sat in the restaurant, she said she could only see his eyebrows because he had a beanie pulled down close to his eyes and was wearing a medical face mask.
On Monday, a few dozen Mangione supporters watched the hearing from the back of the courtroom.
One wore a green T-shirt that said: âWithout a warrant, itâs not a search, itâs a violation.â Another woman held a doll of the Luigi video game character and had a smaller figurine of him clipped to her purse.
Court officials say the hearing could take more than a week.
