Luigi Mangione’s lawyers have been trying to have evidence in his trial thrown out on the grounds that a search of his backpack was illegal. After months of hearings, the judge issued a decision today which gave Luigi a mixed result. On the one hand, some of the evidence found in his backpack on the day he was arrested at an Altoona, PA McDonalds restaurant will not be allowed into the trial. However, other evidence contained in the backpack, including the gun and a journal, will be allowed in.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office secured a partial victory on Monday when a state judge ruled that a gun and notebook found inside Luigi Mangione’s backpack could be used as evidence during his murder trial in September.
Inside of the notebook was what prosecutors have called a manifesto decrying America’s “parasitic” insurance industry and its system of for-profit health care. And the gun, prosecutors have said, was connected to shell casings found at the scene of the killing. The judge, however, ruled that some other evidence from the backpack and some statements could not be used.
Among the items that will be excluded are a gun magazine, a cellphone, a passport, a wallet and a computer chip, Justice Gregory Carro of State Supreme Court in Manhattan said. In court, Justice Carro said he found that the search of the backpack at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania where Mr. Mangione was arrested had been “an improper, warrantless search.”
How could some items found in the backpack be admissible while others are not? In is decision the judge explained that in detail. The basic facts show that Mangione was spotted in the McDonalds and one of the officers was immediately convinced he was the the shooter from New York. Luigi had a backpack with him and also a laptop at the time he was spotted.
More police were called and initially Mangione gave them a fake name and a matching fake license. However, that license was not in the system and when police confronted him he admitted he had lied. At that point they had cause to arrest him and they did eventually place him under arrest.
While all this was happening, the laptop and the backpack were placed on a nearby table several feet away. After he was placed under arrest, a few of the officers who turned up that morning decided to search the backpack, allegedly to make sure it didn’t contain any explosives.
Officers Detweiler, Frye, and McCoy searched the defendant’s pockets and clothing, recovering the jar of peanut butter, a pouch with money, some coins, gloves, papers, a hat and some string. As Fox approached the table where the backpack was, he asked the defendant if there was anything in the bag they needed to know about. Defendant responded that he was “just going to remain silent.” Wasser and Fox then proceeded to search the defendant’s backpack. As they did so, employees and customers continued to walk through the back area to access a closet or the bathroom.
Wasser unzipped the backpack’s main compartment, and removed a sandwich as well as a loaf of bread. As they continued to look through the backpack, Cpl. Trent approached and suggested that they “go through that back at the station,” Wasser responded, “I don’t know. Just want to make sure there’s nothing in there that’s gonna— Fox joked that he would rather have a bomb “here than down at the station.” Wasser responded, laughing, that she did not want to “pull a Moser,” a reference to an officer who had once transported a pipe bomb back to the stationhouse.
Inside the backpack they found a gun magazine and a piece of cardboard that contained a memory chip inside it. Fortunately, they stopped there and didn’t open the other compartments of the backpack at the McDonalds.
Mangione and the backpack were transferred to the station and there the search continued as part of a standard intake procedure. At the station, police opened another compartment of the backpack and found a 3D printed gun, a homemade silencer and a journal. Per procedure, the search was then moved to another room of the station once the gun was found.
Ultimately, the judge found that the initial search at the McDonalds was an illegal search. Under Pennsylvania law, police can carry out a search to ensure the immediate safety of officers but only if the item in question is “grabbable” by the suspect.
In order to invoke the exigency exception, the property must be within the suspect’s “immediate control” or “grabbable area,” Gokey, 60 NY2d at 312. Under those circumstances, there are two interests that justify a warrantless search: “the safety of the public and the arresting officer; and the protection of evidence from destruction or concealment.” Id; see also Jimenez, 22 NY3d at 721-22. Even a bag within the immediate control or “grabbable area” of the suspect at the time of his arrest may not be subject to a warrantless search incident to arrest unless the circumstances “support a reasonable belief that the suspect may gain possession of a weapon or be able to destroy evidence located in the bag.” Jimenez, 22 NY3d at 722; Gokey, 60 NY2d at 311.
Here, the backpack was not within the defendant’s immediate control or “grabbable area” at the time of the arrest or search. Hanelly moved the backpack away from the defendant and out of his reach shortly after he arrived, while a number of officers stood around the defendant; Hanelly considered him “detained.”
Bottom line, Mangione had no way to grab the backpack or anything in it and police had not reason to suspect a bomb inside it. So everything found during that initial search is out, including the memory chip and the magazine.
Luckily, police stopped there and did not open or search the rest of the backpack. If they had done so and found the gun and journal then those would also be tossed out of the trial. But since they were found later as part of an intake search, the judge allowed them in.
An inventory search is a “search designed to properly catalogue the contents of the item searched,” and it must be “conducted according to a familiar routine procedure.” People v. Douglas, 40 NY3d 385, 388 (2023); People v. Johnson, 1 NY3d 252, 256 (2003). It must not be a ruse for “general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence.” Florida v. Wells, 495 U.S. 1, 4 (1990); see also Johnson, 1 NY3d at 256. While the discovery of incriminating evidence may be a consequence of an inventory search, it should not be its purpose…
Thus, it is clear that that the Altoona Police Department had an established inventory search protocol, that the protocol was followed, and that the search produced the “hallmark of an inventory search: a meaningful inventory list.” Johnson, 1 NY3d at 256. And as noted above, any “minor deviations” from the protocol do not invalidate the search.8 Therefore, the People met their burden of establishing that this was a valid inventory search.
In short, the judge found that making an inventory of the backpack’s contents was part of a standard inventory search and the items found during that search (the gun and the journal containing the manifesto) were found legally. So those items, as well as a memory card Mangione was wearing around his neck when he was arrested, are all being ruled in. Police got a search warrant to further examine those items later that night.
Also allowed in are some statements Mangione made while in custody at the police station. He had indicated he didn’t want to speak without a lawyer but then had casual conversations with police officers about what was being reported about his case and how he felt about the U.S. healthcare system. Those statements, because they were not the result of questioning by police will be in.
Obviously this is not what the defense was hoping for. Prosecutors have shell casings from the scene which match the gun and the manifesto in the journal contains proof of Mangione’s motive for the attack.
Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.
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