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- [00:00]
Anya Cain
A vacation rental should come with support, not surprises. That's why VRBO comes with a VRBoCare guarantee and 24. 7 life support from real people. So if something goes sideways, VRBoCare can help. If the host cancels verbocare. If the listing says heated pool, but there's actually no pool to heat. Definitely a verbocare thing. If my teenager starts calling me Leslie instead of mom, that's a family thing. Leslie. That makes sense. Sorry. Book with support, not surprises. Verbo Care and 24. 7 Life Support. If you know you're verbo, terms apply. See for details. And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show. Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird. Yeah, the bird looks out of your league. Anyways, get a'@libertymutual.com or with your local agent. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. I'm Anya and today we're going to talk about some of the arguments around suppression issues in the murder of Brian Thompson, a case involving defendant Luigi Mangione. Content Warning. This episode contains discussion of murder. So previously we talked about the post hearing memorandum of law in opposition to defendants motion to suppress. That is a wordy title for a long document of 106 pages that has the name on it of Joel Seidman. He's the senior trial counsel and assistant District attorney for District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office. This is the attorney's office that is prosecuting Luigi Mangione at a state level. He's also has a federal prosecution going on. And of course Luigi Mangione is the young man accused of murdering 50 year old Brian Robert Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, on December 4, 2024 in Midtown Manhattan. This is a case that has really garnered a lot of attention, a lot of discussion of the healthcare insurance business and you know, what, what role that plays in society. A very controversial, controversial role within, you know, the United States. A lot of people very angry about how they've been treated or harmed by health insurance over the years. And that's really played a role in a lot of the discussion and interest in this case. Because I think in many quarters the person who killed Brian Thompson is seen sort of as maybe a more heroic figure than your typical accused murderer. Is that fair to say?
- [02:41]
Kevin Greenlee
Kevin it's fair to say.
- [02:42]
Anya Cain
And so what this document is about specifically is basically what the defense did was across a multi day hearing that occurred in December of 2025. They have been trying to seek the suppression of certain evidence collected in this case. Mostly what they're talking about is evidence collected in Altoona, Pennsylvania when Mangione was first arrested. And so they're arguing for that. And what this document that was filed March 2, 2026 is arguing is no, don't suppress this, this evidence. And here's why. Then there's yet another document that we're going to talk about where it's the defense coming back and saying no, no, you really should suppress it. So you know, typical like, you know,
- [03:30]
Kevin Greenlee
typical back and forth, back and forth.
- [03:32]
Anya Cain
And this just gives the judge, you know, the ability to make an informed decision once it comes time to when he has to decide whether to suppress or not. And that will be occurring in May, May 18, 2026. That is when Judge Gregory Caro, the judge at the state level here, will be making his decisions. So let's get into it. My name is Anya Cain, I'm a
- [04:00]
Kevin Greenlee
journalist and I'm Kevin Greenlee, I an attorney.
- [04:03]
Anya Cain
And this is the Murder Sheet.
- [04:05]
Kevin Greenlee
We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet and this is
- [04:13]
Anya Cain
the murder of Brian Thompson, the case of Luigi Mangione. Suppression responses.
- [04:34]
Kevin Greenlee
It.
- [05:04]
Anya Cain
So to start out with, with the argument section of this document, I'm going to read Mr. Seideman's sort of bit of an intro here to kind of that kind of explains the court's role within this process. Quote, preliminarily, the people note that in the suppression context, this court serves two roles in that it must make factual findings and then reach conclusions of law on the subject of factual findings. The people submit that every witness testified credibly at the hearing. The witness's testimony was corroborated not only by testimony from other witnesses, but also by body worn camera footage that captured much of the conduct in question. Defendant nonetheless insists that certain witnesses simply lied, both while being recorded on BWC footage and while testifying at the hearing. People. The people dispute those claims and, and we'll respond to them below in the portions of this memorandum that discuss the searches or statements that they relate to.
- [06:02]
Kevin Greenlee
Let's talk about that for just a moment here. When a judge is making a conclusion on whether or not certain pieces of evidence are admitted to a trial, he does have to make decisions both on terms of what happened and also in terms of the law. Because there are very certain rules and regulations about how evidence is collected. And if those rules aren't followed, maybe the evidence doesn't come in. So the first thing the judge needs to do is they need to look at all of the available evidence and information about how the evidence was collected. You need to listen to the testimony of witnesses. You need to. If there's body cam footage, you need to study that. You need to make a factual determination. Here is what happened. Here are the events that occurred around the collection of the evidence. And then once the judge makes that determination, the judge then must make the findings of law, which is, okay, now that I know what happened, does that fall within the parameters of what the rule allows or is it outside of what's allowed and therefore must be excluded? So that's what he means when he says the judge is going to be making factual conclusions and legal conclusions.
- [07:28]
Anya Cain
Yes, that makes sense. So that. That judge is playing Caro in this case. Judge Caro is playing a dual role. And, and you know, they're also mentioning maybe some of the contentiousness here of the defense is saying, well, these witnesses must have lied. And, you know, I think what Sideman tries to do with this whole document is, you know, push back against that notion and say, like, you know, like, this is. The Altoona Police department in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was not necessarily, like, ready to deal with this sudden appearance of an accused, a shooter, of a. In a high profile case. But that doesn't mean they messed it up, and that doesn't mean that they're lying or did anything wrong that would mess up the case. So I think that's something that's important to note. You know, like, we have to, as people who are assessing this case and people who are all kind of like, looking into it, we have to look at, you know, what. What's being claimed by both sides and sort of see which one makes sense, I guess, which one's also supported by the facts. And throughout this document, he's citing, like, body cam footage, he's citing testimony from different witnesses. You know, typically the truth hangs together and nobody's like, you know, altering it. And, you know, it's. It's sort of. It makes sense. And lies tend to be a lot more elaborate in my experience, although it can. It can differ.
- [08:55]
Kevin Greenlee
And of course, we did do an entire other episode as to what happened in Altoona.
- [09:01]
Anya Cain
That was our last episode on the Mangione case. So if you want to go back and refresh yourself. That's. We'll kind of be getting into a little bit of that. But that episode is more on the facts. This is more on the legal arguments. So Sideman notes that Mangione's team is arguing that the evidence recovered from his backpack at the McDonald's should be suppressed. He accuses them of not, quote, spelling out which evidence was recovered at that stage, end quote. A little bit of shade there, I think. He highlights the passport, the wallet, and a fully loaded gun magazine. And he says none of those should be suppressed. And he also notes that the search at the McDonald's doesn't even bring up the pistol, the silencer. Those were found at the station house. Those were found at the Altoona Police Department station house. And they didn't find the red notebook until they basically they handled it when they were searching for a bomb in the backpack, but they never opened it. So he's saying this is kind of like typically what you see in these arguments, you see kind of like this shouldn't be thrown out legally, but also like, let's talk about it factually. These things weren't even found there. So you kind of like, almost like doing a couple of different layers of the argument, is that right?
- [10:22]
Kevin Greenlee
That is correct.
- [10:24]
Anya Cain
One big thing is we're talking about two states here. New York, the Empire State, which is where this murder occurred. The New York City Police Department were the lead agency on investigating Brian Thompson's killing. And then the officers arresting Luigi Mangioni were in Altoona, Pennsylvania. And what he's sort of arguing is what happens in Altoona stays in Altoona, or at least what happens in Pennsylvania should be dealt with under Pennsylvania law. So this is, this is what he said, quote, this court should use Pennsylvania law to assess the reasonableness of Pennsylvania officers search of defendants backpack at McDonald's in Pennsylvania. Defendant contends that the actions of the Pennsylvania officers who were acting under color of Pennsylvania law when they arrested defendant in Pennsylvania for a Pennsylvania crime must now be judged under the search and seizure law of New York. But it would not deter unreasonable searches and seizures to require Pennsylvania police to officers to understand and apply a foreign jurisdictions case law when conducting a search in Pennsylvania of a defendant arrested in Pennsylvania for committing a Pennsylvania crime. For that reason, this court should reject the defense's requests and instead hold that because these Pennsylvania officers followed Pennsylvania search and seizure law reasonably and in good faith while carrying out an arrest in Pennsylvania for violations of Pennsylvania law, their search of the backpack at the McDonald's in Pennsylvania was reasonable and therefore provides no basis for suppression, end quote. Pennsylvania doesn't even sound like a real word word to me anymore after that. But why don't we talk about this? So he's. He's saying that the defense is saying that trying to apply search and seizure law in New York to what happened in Pennsylvania, ultimately Mangioni was arrested around having, like, the false ID in Pennsylvania and whatnot. So what, what he's arguing, being arrested for legitimate Pennsylvania crime in Pennsylvania, expecting these officers to have been, like, brushing up on their New York search and seizure law just because this also has to do with a New York crime and a fugitive from New York is unreasonable. What do you think of that?
- [12:40]
Kevin Greenlee
I think that's a compelling argument. It would be difficult to expect police officers to be aware of the nuances of the differences of laws in all 50 states and also to be aware when they are approaching a potential suspect, to be a. To understand, okay, I'm arresting this person because of something he did in my state, but he might have done something wrong in another state, too. So I'm going to follow the letter of that state's law as well.
- [13:12]
Anya Cain
He says, he argues that the First Department of the Appellate Division has embraced, quote, embrace such logic. He cites People v. Smith, a 2001 case where a defendant confessed to officials in Jamaica, the country, that he killed somebody in New York. Now, the officials in Jamaica had not delivered his Miranda warnings, which are required under New York law. So, you know, the thing is, it happened in Jamaica. So they don't. That's not. That's not their law. And when he was prosecuted in New York, the defendant moved to suppress that confession under, as a violation of his Miranda rights. And ultimately the Appellate Division, First Department, rejected that, saying, quote, there was no evidence that the Jamaican authorities acted as agents of New York Police, end quote. We're talking about agents of police. What can that mean?
- [14:09]
Kevin Greenlee
Well, so in other words, if the New York authorities had contacted Jamaica and said, we, we want to get a confession out of this guy, we want you to do what? Do whatever it takes to get a confession. And by the way, don't Mirandize him and just do exactly what we say. If that's the case, and if the Jamaican authorities are acting under the direction of the New York police for New York goals, then they would be considered to be acting as agents of the New York police. But if they are just going about their business, doing things as they normally do, there's no reason, according to this logic, to suppress it, since they're not acting as Agents.
- [14:52]
Anya Cain
Yeah. And like, even if, like, I mean, honestly, like, that can be as minimal as even maybe like that New York calling Jamaica and being like, hey, can you get this guy? Like, they don't have to say, don't violate his Miranda rights, but like, you know, there's some kind of connection. There's some kind of, like, joint operation. But if there's not that, then it's sort of like, you know, okay, that means we can't go and take over other countries and make them introduce Miranda warnings. That's not how anything works.
- [15:21]
Kevin Greenlee
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- [16:37]
Anya Cain
Refresh your everyday with luxury. You'll actually use head to quince.commsheet for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com msheet for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quinn.com msheet so they also. He also cites. Well, he rather he talks about the 2nd Circuit held that quote held that evidence gathered outside of the United States by foreign officials was presumptively admissible. The Second Circuit has since reaffirmed that position, explaining that enforcing the exclusionary rule in that context would serve no deterrent purpose because the actions of an American court are unlikely to influence the conduct of foreign police, end quote. So that's for Jamaica. That's another country. It's not in the United States. But what he's linking to it is that it would apply to states, too. And what he's saying is essentially like, if we're willing to be that lenient about something like Miranda happening in a totally foreign country, you know, having, like, the nuances of search and seizure rules be different between states should also get some consideration. And this is what he says, quote. Although Smith and the 2nd Circuit cases dealt with evidence collected by foreign officials in foreign countries, most states apply a similar rationale in the domestic analog, the collection of evidence in other states by other states officers. As the Connecticut Supreme Court has observed, the majority of courts that have considered the issue have concluded that it does not offend the constitutional principles of a forum jurisdiction to allow the transfer of a criminal evidence from the officers of another jurisdiction to those of the forum when the evidence has been obtained lawfully by the former without any assistance by the latter, even when the search would have been illegal in the forum jurisdiction, end quote.
- [18:35]
Kevin Greenlee
So what they're saying there is, it's okay for evidence that has been collected properly by the police in one state to be transferred to the police in a different state, as long as. Let me rephrase this. So if I'm in State A and I commit a crime and then I go to State B and I am arrested in State B and the police in State B collect evidence against me in a way that is legal in State B but illegal in State A, this says that would be okay for that evidence to be transferred to State A anyway, because the police in State B have acted lawfully, they indicate there's an exception there, which would be that if police from State A come and help the police in State B and are involved in the operation, then perhaps that would be a different matter. But as long as the police in State B are acting independently, and as long as they are acting lawfully under the laws of State B, then this suggests that that would be appropriate and allowed for the evidence to be transferred. Is that how you read that?
- [20:01]
Anya Cain
Yes. And, you know, there was an interesting footnote here where he noted that the Connecticut Supreme Court actually seemed to think that New York may be in the minority because of a case called People v. Criminger. But this is what Seidman has to say about that case. Quote, griminger did not involve the extraterritorial application of New York law. Instead, Griminger held that federal law enforcement agents who were Gathering evidence in New York that would be used to support a state court prosecution could not circumvent New York's heightened search warrant standards by going to a federal magistrate in New York. As one court later observed, the rule of Griminger makes sense because were it otherwise, New York police officers could circumvent New York search and seizure law by bringing warrants of questionable validity under the Aguilar Spinelli to a federal magistrate. End quote. What he's saying there is we have federal. We have federal law enforcement officers in the United States. We have, for instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI. We have the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau or. Or atf. So when you have them, what. What Griminger is trying to stave off is that New York has, again, it. Heightened search and seizure rules. It's more. It's more delicate there. There needs to be more boxes ticked off. It's more. You know, there needs to be more things done perhaps than other states. And that's fine. That's what New York is. Is doing. But they don't want those federal officers. They also don't want, like, people on a federal task force to be circumventing those search and seizure rules and laws by going to a federal magistrate and having them sign off on it. And it's like, well, we're doing it federally so, you know, we don't have to listen to New York. So that's what they're trying to get around there. It's not about making it so that, like. And again, those are. Those are federal law enforcement agents supporting a state court investigation. Not a federal court. State court. So it would be as if the FBI is helping the NYPD with a murder investigation, and then they go do this. And he's saying, like, this is different because, I mean, it's like we're talking about, like, Pennsylvania police who were not expecting this guy to show up. And they weren't, like, working hand in hand with nypd. They couldn't get the NYPD to pick up the phone for a lot of. As we learned when we talked about the. The timeline.
- [22:29]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah. This sort of thing. What they're concerned with there would be. We be considered forum shopping where a law enforcement officer, a federal law enforcement officer, deliberately chooses to pursue the venue where he believes he is most likely to get a warrant or have success based on the different laws between the states and the federal system. So it would almost be like, imagine, for instance, this is not what happened. But imagine if the authorities who were pursuing Mr. Mangione said to themselves, oh, we want to get some evidence from him. It would be illegal for us to get that evidence in New York. Let's lure him over to Pennsylvania where the laws are lax or more lax than New York so we can get that evidence from him lawfully there. That would be a problem.
- [23:28]
Anya Cain
Yeah, it would be dishonest.
- [23:29]
Kevin Greenlee
But again, that's not what happened here. The. It was Mr. Mangione's own decision to go to Pennsylvania where the laws were different.
- [23:40]
Anya Cain
And what. And what they're saying is that it's not reasonable for police officers to be experts in all search and seizure laws in every state. And that even in this situation, you could say, well, they knew that he was. They were looking at possibly the New York City shooter. But, like, you know, I just imagine, like, a bunch of police officers all of a sudden, like, in any situation, like having, like, these, like, law textbooks open and, like, flipping rapidly, you know, like that not. That doesn't really make any sense. It's not reasonable. That's what he's saying. What do you think?
- [24:10]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah, I agree with that. It is reasonable for us to expect the law enforcement officers of a particular jurisdiction to be fully aware of the laws and regulations of that particular jurisdiction. That's reasonable, and that's what we should expect from them. I don't think it is reasonable or rational for us to expect law enforcement officers to be aware of the different laws and the nuances of different laws in all 50 states and perhaps even the differences between the states and the federal.
- [24:43]
Anya Cain
I agree. I think one. One intermediary with that is if there's a task force, if there is an interagency cooperation involving multiple jurisdictions, then there should also be a widespread understanding of search and seizure laws in whatever jurisdiction is the focus, even if it's from people who are outsiders to that. But I agree. It's. It's not. It's not reasonable. So, quote, in general, when officers of one state comply with the search and seizure laws of that state, they reasonably understand themselves to be acting lawfully. They cannot be expected to know the different search and seizure laws of 49 other states, much less anticipate which state's search and seizure law will govern in interaction with a particular defendant, end quote. So, yeah, that's him kind of summing it up. He argues that the United States Supreme Court agrees with him and cites Davis v. United States, a 2011 case. He wrote that the court held that, quote, it is improper to suppress evidence for a Fourth amendment violation by police officers who conducted a search in Compliance with binding president that is later overruled, end quote. And said basically that when police act, quote, in strict compliance with binding precedent, the court explained the sanction of exclusion is unwarranted. As the court elaborated, all that exclusion would deter in such circumstances is conscientious police work. Because when binding appellate precedent specifically authorize authorizes a particular police practice, well, trained officers will and should use that tool to fulfill their crime detection and public safety responsibilities, end quote.
- [26:20]
Kevin Greenlee
So they're saying there, if a police officer does something that is lawful, then it is wrong to say, well, he did something that was lawful, but let's toss it out anyway.
- [26:29]
Anya Cain
Yeah.
- [26:30]
Kevin Greenlee
Because that would just deter police officers
- [26:32]
Anya Cain
from doing their jobs. So, yeah, he's talking about this is common sense. And in conclusion, quote, those cases thus referred to New York law controlling a New York prosecution, but only say that in a New York prosecution, New York courts will not trouble themselves with assertive violations of other states search and seizure law. None of those cases adopt the defendant's position that other states police officers should be held to New York's search and seizure law, especially when the other state's officers are making the arrest in that other state for a violation of that other state's laws. Indeed, any such position would be contrary to the court of appeals decisions in Guthrie and Estrella. For these reasons, the court should apply Pennsylvania search and seizure standards in determining the reasonableness of the Altoona police officer's search of the defendant's backpack at the McDonald's as they were arresting him for violations of Pennsylvania law. Okay, so that's his point on that one. Now let's get on to the next point he talks about. Why is basically this gets into why does Pennsylvania law support what the Altoona officers did at the McDonald's? Quote, the record from the hearing demonstrates that at every step, APD officers conducted themselves in accordance with Pennsylvania search and seizure law. First, officers Detwiler and Fry acted in accordance with Pennsylvania law when they approached Defendant, asked him to lower his mask and requested his identification. Upon seeing Defendant's face, Detwiler immediately recognized him as the person wanted for Brian Thompson's murder. That recognition provided the officers with probable cause to arrest Defendant. And as it became more and more apparent that Defendant had given the officers a fake driver's license, that forged identification provided the officers with an independent basis for arresting him for violating Pennsylvania law. The officers did not, however, immediately place Defendant under arrest. Instead, they discreetly requested assistance, continued engaging with defendant to avoid raising alarm, and continued investigating. Defendants suspected use of False identification. It was not until 9:58am that defendant was actually formally placed under arrest. Just as officers Detwiler, Fry and McCoy began searching defendant's person, Officers Wasser and Fox began searching his backpack, which sat on a table a few feet away. So then he cites some examples that he feels will be helpful. And remember, Pennsylvania is a commonwealth, right? So that it comes up in these as instead of people or whatever or, you know, new Commonwealth. Commonwealth, yeah. Both the search of the defendant's person and the search of his backpack were proper searches. Incident under an incident to arrest under Pennsylvania law. In Commonwealth v. Simpson, a Pennsylvania appellate court explained that Pennsylvania's search incident to arrest doctrine allows arresting officers to search both the person arrested and the area within his immediate control. The court noted that the rationale underlying the exception was to prevent the arrestee from obtaining a weapon or destroying evidence. But it went on to explain that the search incident to arrests exception applies categorically so that the exception permits such searches as a matter of course and without a case by case adjudication of whether a search of a particular arrestee is likely to protect officer safety and evidence. End quote.
- [29:45]
Kevin Greenlee
Okay, so a search incident to arrest. This is something that police officers can do once they've made the decision to arrest someone, once they believe they have the legal right to arrest someone. And this means they can search the person and they can search the area around the person. And as it was correctly noted there, the thinking behind that generally is if a person has something on his body or if there's something near a person, then it is possible that that could constitute evidence which could be destroyed by the person. Or it's also possible that something the person is carrying or is hidden around the person that he can get to could potentially be a weapon and harm him and or harm others as well. So that is the general thinking behind that, and that's why we allow the search incident to arrest. And again, this is something that can only happen once a person has been arrested. And I think it is also worth highlighting what you just read there, which you don't have to make a case that, oh, we had to do this search because we had these particular reasons to be afraid that the person we were arresting had access to a weapon. You don't have to make that determination. Just the fact that you are arresting a person is enough reason to allow you to do one of these searches. Incident to arrest that.
- [31:16]
Anya Cain
That's absolutely right. So they talk about the backpack specifically. This is all about the backpack, right? Because it's it's. That was kind of where he was carrying a lot of these items. And the backpack initially, as we learned in our last episode, was sitting at the floor by Mangione's feet at this McDonald's. And this is important because it gets into what, you know, how do you assess what is technically in the possession of an arrestee at the time of arrest? So this is what Seidman said, quote, Pennsylvania courts do not focus solely on the item's status at the moment of arrest. Instead, they have upheld searches that occurred shortly before the moment of arrest, provided the officer had probable cause to arrest prior to the search. And they have upheld container searches that occurred after a defendant has been taken into custody, reasoning that the arrestee had possession of the container at the time the police had probable cause to make the arrest. The defendant in Dunbar was carrying a duffel bag over his shoulder, but officers took it from him. It was only after detaining the defendant and reducing the bag to their exclusive control that the officer searched in. On appeal, the defendant in Dunbar argued that this the justification for the search incident to arrest exception did not apply after the officers had detained him and taken control of the bag. But the Pennsylvania Superior Court rejected those arguments, explaining that the defendant was carrying the duffel bag over his shoulder at the time the police had probable caused to arrest him. The analysis in Dunbar squarely governs the facts of this case as defendant does not dispute the officers had probable cause to arrest him in connection with the Brian Thompson shooting as soon as Officer Detwiler recognized him at 9:29am and that was supplemented by an independent Probable cause at 9:33am when the lack of a record of defendant's driver's license indicated that it was fake, such that the defendant had violated Pennsylvania law. Throughout that time, defendants sat at the table while his backpack, which Officer Detweiler did not move until 9:41am was on the floor next to his feet. The bag was thus in defendant's possession at the time the police had probable cause to arrest him. End quote.
- [33:27]
Kevin Greenlee
Yes. Oh, that's very interesting. What they're arguing about there is whether or not what happened fits the factual pattern of what is allowed. And so they were trying to say, well, what is within your control at the time you are arrested? Because it has to be within your control in order to fall under this exception to allow this search incident to arrest. And different states have different ideas about how to define this. And they are citing cases from Pennsylvania which seem to indicate that a duffel bag, that a person is Carrying or had is near the person at the time probable cause exists. That's enough for it to become search incident to arrest.
- [34:13]
Anya Cain
It's interesting, he notes that he quotes from the defendant's brief, which is quote, altoona law enforcement routinely violates search and seizure law and the fourth Amendment by searching bags incident to a lawful arrest, even if the bag is not within the defendant's immediate control or grabbable area. And what he's saying is that that's not true. And he cites Williams, Dunbar, Guzman, and it's just like this is no basis for suppression. So the next point he kind of is going through this point by point, talks about how the APD officers were not familiar with New York search and seizure law and. But their search of the backpack actually comports with New York search and seizure law because exigent circumstances justified the officer's limited search of the backpack at the scene. Quote, the court of appeals has stressed that courts simply must not, in this difficult area of street encounters between private citizens and law enforcement officers, attempt to dissect each individual act by the policeman. Rather, the events must be viewed and considered as a whole. Remembering the reasonableness is the key principle when undertaking the task of balancing competing interests presented. And in order to do this, they recognize certain exigent circumstances that may justify warrantless searches of closed containers incident to an arrest. And he says that there are two exigent circumstances that supported the search of the backpack in the McDonald's. So again, what is he saying there? We've already gone over, we shouldn't be holding them to a New York standard. Pennsylvania law is what makes sense because that doesn't make sense to have everyone know every law we have. We have, they, they followed Pennsylvania law, now we're actually going back. Nope, but they followed New York law too. So this is, you know, what you see with these, with these attorneys and criminal cases, with these kind of filings, you, you have kind of giving the judge a lot of options.
- [36:15]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah.
- [36:16]
Anya Cain
So the first exigent circumstance is that they had, quote, a reasonable concern that defendants backpack might contain explosives, end quote. What's the evidence for this? Well, on the body worn camera footage, the officers are constantly talking about being worried about there being explosives. They're looking at this as a political crime, as some kind of political statement. And they associate that with somebody who had, might have more plans, someone who might be wanting to bomb things, a terrorist attack, things like that. So that is what they're concerned about. They even quote, Corporal Trent saying the officers should, quote, make sure there's no bombs or anything, end quote, in the backpack. And Officer Wasser, in response to this, is, like, feeling how heavy it is and saying, you know, I don't know, end quote. So she says, I don't want to pull a Moser. That again, refers to, hilariously, a APD officer named Moser who brought a bomb, a pipe bomb into the station house years ago. So they're very concerned about explosives. That's very clear from the testimony and from the body camera footage. And even when they brought the thing into the station house, they're still kind of like, okay, like, are we sure there's no explosives? Are we sure? Yeah.
- [37:31]
Kevin Greenlee
And I think it's important to stress those facts because the law doesn't require police officers to put themselves in harm's way in a circumstance like this. If there is a reasonable suspicion that a closed container might have a bomb in it and that it might pose a risk of harm to the law enforcement officer or others, they are able to take a look at it to. To ascertain what the facts are.
- [38:05]
Anya Cain
Yes. And what he argues here is, hey, the United States. The United States Supreme Court agrees with us. So they talk about how that they have, quote, expressly noted that in such situations, officers have a sound justification for conducting a warrantless search of the item in question. In United States v. Chadwick, the court opined that if officers have a reason to believe that luggage contains some immediately dangerous instrumentality, such as explosives, it would be foolhardy to transport it to the station house without opening the luggage and disarming the weapon. End quote.
- [38:36]
Kevin Greenlee
So that's common sense.
- [38:39]
Anya Cain
He summarizes Mangione's argument, which he says, you know, he claims that the officer's stated concerns are, quote, a blatantly false and pretextual justification for conducting an evidentiary search. End quote. So when we're talking about pretextual, it's like, if I'm. I don't know if. If we're driving and we get pulled over because we're speeding and the officer just hates us for some reason and wants to be like, well, they kind of had the vibe that they might have a bomb on them.
- [39:10]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah.
- [39:11]
Anya Cain
You know, like, you don't want police officers just being like, I think everything is a bomb.
- [39:15]
Kevin Greenlee
You know, like, that's what Mr. Mangione, through his attorneys, is claiming. He's trying to make the argument that, oh, they didn't really think there was a bomb in there. They were just saying that so they could take a look inside my backpack and.
- [39:30]
Anya Cain
And I, you know, I think in certain instances you might be able to argue that, like, why would you think of a bomb? Like, why, like, again, like, there would be certain instances where it was, like, that's. Why would you, why would your mind go there in this case where it's a high profile killing that sort of mirrors an assassination and there's bullets being found with like, you know, messaging on them. And I think personally, that's a pretty reasonable concern because again, like, you associate those kind of political crimes with bombing, like a Timothy McVeigh situation or, or, you know, what, you know, we could like ISIS or something. You don't know what's going on. And I'm not saying, like, that's not the motivations here, but when you have the kind of politicized crime, when you have something that kind of seems to be like, kind of a social message, a political message being done, you know, through the killing. I think that, I think a concern about explosives is not unreasonable. I mean, am I giving them too much credit here? What do you think? I understand the argument about it being pretextual or, oh, they're just trying to justify this. And I, I understand that concern. And we certainly don't want to get into a situation where it's like, everything's bombs. I can look at everything, you know, but in this particular situation also, just given that, like, like, I mean, I don't know, like, I can, I can see a situation where you can have people kind of like, oh, maybe there's a bomb. Yeah, maybe there's a bomb. But like, it sounds like here they were more like, ugh, you know, it sounded more natural. It sounded more like, we're actually worried about a bomb.
- [41:03]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah, I tend to think that in this case there was a reasonable fear of a bomb. And that's not to say I don't think it is unreasonable for Mr. Mangione and his attorneys to raise this issue because it is easy to see how something like this could potentially be abused.
- [41:24]
Anya Cain
Yeah.
- [41:24]
Kevin Greenlee
So it's certainly worthy of taking a look at. In this case, I, I would tend to agree that the, the fear that there was a bomb or some sort of explosive device in the backpack was a reasonable one.
- [41:39]
Anya Cain
Now, that was the first exigent circumstance. What's the second? Well, that is that they were concerned that the backpack had an operable firearm in it. So we have a bomb and then a gun. That's what they're worried about. So they are concerned because they believe this is the same suspect who shot and killed somebody. Several days earlier, they had seen it, reported in the media that no murder weapon had been recovered. So they think this is the guy. Maybe he still has the weapon. Now, Seidman admits, quote, to be sure, the APD officers were more vocal about the risks of a bomb than the risks of a gun. But both Wasser and Fox explained at the hearing that they were also concerned about the possibility of a gun in the backpack, end quote. So, yeah, they're talking about the bomb. They're on the camera talking about, okay, this might explode. I understand that, though, because it's like the bomb would be a more immediate problem. You know, if you have, you know, if you have at some point kind of gotten him away from the backpack or, you know, you feel like, you know, if he lunges for it, you can take him. Like, the bomb, though, might just go off without any. Without him needing to do much. So, I mean, I don't know. I kind of understand that they would be talking about one and not the other. But this is what side of Min says, quote. New York appellate courts have long recognized that when officers reasonably suspect that a bag contains a firearm, they may search that bag. Incident to arrest, even if the arrestee has already been handcuffed. In People v. Smith, officers handcuffed a man, took possession of his briefcase and then searched it. The hearing court suppressed the briefcase contents because the arrestee was in handcuffs, leaving the police in exclusive control of the briefcase. Court of Appeals, however, rejected that analysis. It specified that container search's incident to arrest could be valid even though the arrested person has been subdued and is closed container is within the exclusive control of police. And it went on to uphold the search on the ground that the officers had reason to suspect that the arrestee was carrying a weapon. The court specified that whether, in fact defendant could have had access to the briefcase at the moment it was being searched is irrelevant. End quote. So what does that mean? They're saying that even in a situation where you. The person's not a threat, they're handcuffed, they're detained, the bag is taken from them, the container is taken from them. That doesn't matter. They still have a right to search it. Incident to arrest. He brought up that the Luigi Mangioni brought up people be Morales morale. But he argues that, quote, Morales only enforces the common sense conclusion that exigency arising from concerns about firearms differs from exigency arising from concerns about destruction of evidence. The arrestee and Morales had, repeat, reportedly tried to steal from women's purses in a restaurant. Had failed to heed investigating officers instruction to keep his hands out of his pockets as they escorted him from the restaurant and had then been handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car. It was only then that officers searched the arrestees jacket, which was lying outside on the car's trunk, and found that it contained narcotics and a box cutter. Neither the nature of the crime nor any other circumstance gave the officers in Morales reason to suspect that the arrestee was carrying a firearm in his jacket. And any other kind of exigency, such as a concern about the destruction of evidence, was eliminated by the fact that it was physically impossible for the arrestee to reach his jacket. The Morales decision thus does not. Does nothing to undermine the people's position in this case. So this is his conclusion. Basically, there's no reason to suppress the evidence that they got from the backpack in McDonald's that the Altoona police department acted very reasonably. They followed Pennsylvania search and seizure law, and even under New York search and seizure law, what they did was justified because of the exigency of possibility of explosives or a firearm in the bag. That's his big argument, right? What do we think?
- [45:35]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah, yeah, I find that compelling.
- [45:39]
Anya Cain
So that was. Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm not a lawyer and I do want to. I want to. I want us to hear what the defense team also has to say. I've got that at the end here. But that all seems pretty reasonable. And yeah, I mean, certainly well argued. He cited a lot of cases. So then that's all the stuff. That's phase one. So they, they unpacked a lot of stuff at McDonald's. He's saying that's all justified. Now we need to get to the stuff recovered from the backpack at the Altoona station house. So now we're moving from McDonald's to the police department? I guess so he wants that suppressed too. By he, I mean Luigi Mangioni. And that evidence includes a handgun, a silencer, a red notebook, loose pieces of paper. And what Seidman argues is that's recovered through a proper inventory search. And both the New York court of Appeals, the Pennsylvania supreme court, the United States Supreme Court all recognized that, you know, there's a, an exception to the warrant requirement when it comes to inventory search.
- [46:50]
Kevin Greenlee
What is an inventory search?
- [46:52]
Anya Cain
This is a search that, quote, catalogs the contents of the items searched in order to protect the arrestee's property, protect law enforcement against claims of lost property, and protect law enforcement and others from dangerous instruments. End quote. So you are detained, you're arrested, they bring you in, they process you, and they also process your things. They also look through your items, inventory them, list them, and then essentially, typically separate personal items from possible evidence. And this is basically so you don't lose your stuff, so you can accuse the police of stealing your stuff later on, hey, I brought in a ring and it was like worth a million dollars and now it's gone. You know, you don't want that. And you don't also don't want your stuff actually being lost. And you also don't want anything slipping through the cracks as far as, like, contraband, things like that. So what he's arguing is that they did an inventory search and that was appropriate. And he argues that Altoona Police Department's procedures were designed to meet the objectives of inventory searches. So what does that mean? Quote first, the evidence showed that APD has established and standardized procedures that were rationally designed to meet the objective objectives of inventory searches and that limited the discretion of the officer in the field. End quote. They talked about, she. He talks about how Officer Wasser properly conducted the inventory search of the defendant's background pack in the intake room. And the record establishes that APD officers would did this in the. In the room with good faith, complying with APD's written orders as much as practicable under the circumstances. She goes into the station house. Wasser does. She places the backpack in a chair in the intake room. She's starting to inventory it in the defendant's presence in accordance with their standard policy. And then she finds a gun in the backpack, side pocket. She had not looked there in McDonald's, but in there she finds a gun. And Deputy Swope tells her move the backpack into another room. So the reason there, this is according to their policy, if they find a weapon, they. They leave. And they're not doing it in front of the, you know, arrestee anymore. And he at that point is ankle cuffed, but his hands are free, so there would be concern about safety issues there. And, and so they say that that is what he writes is that, quote, that sensible departure from APD's written policies accorded with standard practice throughout the department. So it's not part of their written policy, but it's what they do when that happens. And he said that. Mangione's quote urges the court to find that before the search occurred, Officers Wasser and Fox conspired to clandestinely se the defendant's backpack while transporting it from the McDonald's to the station house. Here are at least two major flaws with that theory. First, the record does not support it. Defendant points to the fact that wasser's drive from McDonald's to the station house took two minutes longer than Officer Detwiler's drives from McDonald's to the station house. But that fact is entirely unremarkable.
- [50:11]
Kevin Greenlee
So wait a minute. So they're saying because the drive took two minutes longer than the other person's drive, that means that in that two minutes his backpack was secretly searched?
- [50:24]
Anya Cain
Yes.
- [50:24]
Kevin Greenlee
Okay, go on.
- [50:26]
Anya Cain
Do you find that likely?
- [50:28]
Kevin Greenlee
I find that unlikely. And I'm curious, and I suspect we will soon find an answer. But I'm curious to see if there is another possible explanation for why the drive took two minutes longer. I suspect there is. There's certainly been occasions when you or I are in different vehic, traveling somewhere and one of us either gets caught in traffic or something happens. I'm curious to see what explanation there is for this two minute discrepancy.
- [50:58]
Anya Cain
And even if a two minute discrepancy required an explanation, it would be thoroughly explained by the testimony that during her drive to the station house, Wasser had to pull over to retrieve the McDonald's bag containing some of the defendants possessions from Fox.
- [51:11]
Kevin Greenlee
Ah, there you go. Duh.
- [51:14]
Anya Cain
Yeah. I don't know, I'm gonna say something like, I see people talking about this case online and I just, I remember when the defense made some of these arguments in the beginning and I saw people being like, wow, the cops in Altoona messed it up so bad, it's gonna get thrown out. And it's like that's, that's coming from people who I think support the defendant, Luigi Mangione. And I think that's, it's fine to support or whatever is that, I mean, like, I don't care, like I'm not telling people how to feel about the case. It's just from a practical standpoint that is, that's like letting your, your prior convict, like, that's like letting your, your prior beliefs, your, your kind of strongly held personal beliefs color your thinking to the extent that it's just kind of like you're, you're jumping to something that's totally irrational. And I, I hate to see that because, you know, you can have an opinion on a case, you can have an opinion on, on something and still be operating somewhat rationally and in, in, you know, in good faith rather than sort of letting your imagination just run away with you. Like, do, you know, like, do you see that like sometimes where people are like, you know, I want this to be true. So yeah, it's going to be true. And it's like, guys, don't do it. It's. It's just going to lead to confusion and not understanding the situation. It's better to just kind of almost like keep your emotions in check. Maybe like lock those in the back room while you're kind of analyzing this and then you can like let them out to play later on. And like, that's fine, you can do both. But it's just sometimes I just see people's analysis of some of these things kind of like where they're like, yeah, they must have like done something sketchy because two minutes, it's like that, that's not enough time. Like, that's, that's silly. So quote, Defendant acknowledges this explanation but insists that is not enough because the exchange between Wasser and fox took only 10 to 40 seconds rather than a full two minutes. Defendant's account, however, ignores the fact that simply slowing down, pulling over to the side of the road, coming to a stop would have added a minute or so to the journey. The duration of Wasser's drive from the McDonald's to the station house thus provides no support for defendant's theory. Second, the defendant's theory lacks any basis in logic. After all, officers Wasser and Fox had just searched defendants backpack at the McDonald's, a search that as explained above in point I1, they reasonably understood to be lawful. And they had every reason to expect that the backpack would be searched again at the station house as part of a lawful inventory search. It is thus difficult to fathom why, knowing that they would soon be able to lawfully search the backpack, they would first search it in secret on the side of the road. Again, like I remember seeing all this stuff. Do you remember this? When this like, like people were like, oh my gosh, it's like, I just, I don't know, there's a lot of really uninformed discourse out there. And also I noticed that the same thing happens again and again. The defense will argue for suppression in other cases and people will act like, or, or anything and people will act like that's the end all, be all without waiting for a response. Now. I mean like if Joel Seidman comes in here and is like, yeah, well yeah, she was gone for 15 minutes. And you know, but like that's fine. Like, yeah, then, then, then maybe they're onto something, right? And then we can, you know, but,
- [54:34]
Kevin Greenlee
but, and I also, I also struggle to understand what would the point of a secret search have been in the car when she knew she had the right to do a legitimate search once she arrived at the station house.
- [54:48]
Anya Cain
It's the classic conundrum where when you have kind of a conspiratorial mindset, the people you're targeting are both total buffoons who are doing things, like, in just stupid ways, but also, like, very adept at framing people. Somehow they're both so. I don't know. You know, it's the. It's. It's just. It's like. It's just not based in assured reality, frankly. That's not to say that the defense shouldn't criticize police. That's big part of their job. They should. That's what they should be going for. Like, it's just more of, like, the gullibility of people when they're kind of assessing this information. And, you know, I. I don't. I don't, like, I'm not trying to be judgmental because I think I was in that boat. Like, I could totally see myself falling for this stuff. If I wasn't doing this full time, I'd be like, oh, wow, this. Maybe there's something there. And it's like, no, Anya, there really isn't.
- [55:44]
Kevin Greenlee
I remember that. Anya.
- [55:45]
Anya Cain
Oh, you. You don't. You didn't know that? Anya, to the. Like, that was years ago. I once told you that I felt, well, whatever. We don't.
- [55:57]
Kevin Greenlee
Let's just.
- [55:58]
Anya Cain
Let's relitigate this. You praise making a murderer once to this guy. So, officer, this is. This is. They talk about how the search then continues in the intake room or in the hallway next to the intake room after they find the gun, the handgun is put in an evidence box for guns. And they. They get the silencer out, they get the gun magazine out, they get a knife. And. And Wasser is handing all these to Deputy Swope, who's placing them in manila evidence envelopes with evidence labels on them. And then Wasser, as is per department policy, is deeming other items, like a disc, a bag of toiletries, pieces of clothing to be personal property of maniones. And she's keeping them with the backpack. She comes upon the red notebook. She says, quote, it's like a journal. Deputy Swopes asks Bagot, and she says, I would. So she's following APD inventory procedure. She's trying to separate items from evidence to personal items. And she's required to separate each item in the defendant's backpack into those two categories. They're going to be processed in different ways. And, you know, she's Examining the contents of the notebook, which is what she's supposed to do. Yeah, so she's, she's, you know, they're saying she didn't do anything wrong. So this is the first issue that Mangione raises with what Officer Wasser did, or at least, you know, in addition to this whole two minute missing two minutes thing. That seems ridiculous, honestly, but, quote, defendant also faults Officer Wasser for pausing to photograph some groceries that had been in the defendant's backpack. But the fact remains that just as Officer Detwiler had already properly recovered the freight driver's license from Defendant, Officer Wasser had already properly seen those groceries, both while searching in the backpack at the McDonald's and while carrying out her inventory search. Wasser's colleagues request that she paused to photograph those items which were not of obvious evidentiary value in the first place, did not transform the entire inventory search into something else. And then he also raises, she did not make a written list of the items in the backpack she was sorting through. So that's part of the inventory process. You have to make a list, right? That makes sense. You make an inventory of what you've been searching so it can have any use later on. But the thing is, you know, you're supposed to do that, but you do not have to do that immediately. So, quote, she was not required to compile such a list at the exact time she was sorting through the backpack's contents. Defendant cites Sergeant Houston's testimony that during the intake process, an officer generally writes down each item recovered while placing it in a bag. But Sergeant Houston also specified that the APD procedures allowed officers to write out inventory lists after sorting through all of in Orestes possessions. Given the many items in defendant's backpack, and given the APD procedures required different kinds of processing for different categories of items, it was reasonable for an officer to sort the items into the relevant categories before APD compiled a written list corresponding to each category. Indeed, the Court of Appeals has upheld an inventory search that did not yield an inventory list until 11 hours later. So again, she wasn't violating procedures there. Next, they go after Sergeant Houston, Officer Featherstone, and Sergeant Burns. So after Wasser finishes sorting the items into, like, the personal property and evidence categories, she hands them off to the evidence custodian, Officer Featherstone, at 10:40am Ten minutes after she finished, Lt. Hanalee then speaks to NYP Detective Lenardi, who then asks, hey, can you guys just, like, hold all of his property? And that would mean that they would need to put everything in the evidence category. So she was following standard procedures and being like, okay, well, his, like, extra clothing isn't evidence. But what Leonardi was like is, like, make put it all in evidence. So they had to switch things up. So Houston, Featherstone, Burns, they start photographing each item. Based on that, they place each item in an envelope, label each envelope, assign a number to each envelope, and list them all in different reports. So they. They go, they move all that into Officer Featherstone's office. There's so many items that they end up having to move up to the roll call room upstairs. And Burns is photographing the front and back of every page in the red notebook, every loose piece of paper, even if there was nothing, no writing on it, and photograph areas where pages appeared to have been torn out of the notebook. And Seidman praises their work. Quote, the record thus powerfully establishes that APD inventoried every item recovered from defendant. The thoroughness of APD's documentation, which includes photographs of items as benign as a blank sheet of paper, loose change, and a CVS receipt, demonstrates that it was carried out in good faith. End quote. We're talking about good faith, Kevin. What is that? Why does that matter? When it comes to a law enforcement search like this, or even law enforcement
- [61:31]
Kevin Greenlee
action in general, good faith basically means that the. The people involved were doing their best to obey the letter and the spirit of the law. In other words, they weren't trying to be dishonest or game the system like earlier we were talking about, what if a police officer said, oh, I think this has a bomb in it, even when they didn't, just to justify a search. So if that's what happened, then a search under those circumstances would not be made in good faith. In good faith, everybody is behaving sincerely and doing their best to follow the letter and the spirit of the law. And if they make a mistake, it is not intentional.
- [62:14]
Anya Cain
Makes sense. Yep. Next they. Heidman shoots down Mangione's bad phrasing. He. He goes after Mangione's contention that the APD policies and procedures do not provide for inventory searches of containers. He said that flies in the face of common sense and the objective of inventory searches being, you know, to, you know, all property taken from an arrestee, regardless of if it's in a container or not. He says that Mangione claims that the search of Officer Featherstone's office in the roll call room exceeded the scope of a proper inventory search because they read the contents of the red notebook and loose papers, and the active reading demonstrated the Officers were using the inventory search merely as a pretext to search for evidence they believed would be helpful to the New York investigation. Seidman disputes this, saying that's wrong for two reasons. One, first, by the time the red notebook arrived in Featherstone's office, Officer Wasser had already surveyed its contents in order to assess whether it should be processed as personal evident property or as evidence. An expectation of privacy that the defendant had once had in the notebook had therefore vanished. Second, the evidence at the hearing made it clear that far from a pretext to search for evidence, the review of defendants backpack contents in Officer Featherstone's office and the roll call room yielded comprehensive documentation of every item in that backpack, regardless of any apparent evidentiary value. Were the officers in fact using the prop inventory process as a mere pretext to search for evidence, they would not have bothered photographing a blank sheet of paper or lose change. And then, you know, they criticize Houston for photographing the defendant's writings in the notebook. And they get in, they say that, you know, at that point Waster had already looked inside it. There was no expectation of privacy. So that's his second point that's largely about the, the, the search at the station house. Next we get into issues around the search warrant. So they did get a search warrant later that day. And this is what Seidman has to say about it. Quote, regardless of the lawfulness of the above described searches of defendants backpack, the backpack's contents are admissible under the independent source doctrine. When police officers recovery of evidence is unlawful in some way, the facts thus obtained do not become sacred and inaccessible. The people may still introduce those facts as long as knowledge of them is gained from an independent source. The rationale underlying the doctrine is that while police officers should not be able to profit from a search and seizure error, they also should not be placed in a worse position than they would have been in absent such an error. As the court of appeals has explained, the exclusionary rule exacts a heavy price. And for that reason, it should be applied only to evidence which has come become by exploitation of an illegality. End quote. So what is, what does that mean, Kevin? Like first there, first we're going into, hey, Pennsylvania law should apply. Plus like New York law pretty much applies here too. And then we go into, hey, they're allowed to do this because it's an inventory search. And now we're at. But also the search warrant. Even if you want to throw those two out, the search warrant can fix it all up.
- [65:35]
Kevin Greenlee
Again, this is what you'd expect to see in an argument like this, you want, if you're the lawyer in charge of making these arguments, you want to give the judge as many ways as possible to get to the result you want. And the result you want is for the evidence to be allowed into trial. So you want to say, well, here's why it should be allowed, but even if you disagree with me on that, it should still be allowed because of this different reason. Oh, even if you disagree with me on that, it should still be allowed based on this entirely different reason. So this is just what you would expect to see in a document of this type.
- [66:15]
Anya Cain
So that the day of the arrest, December 9th, 6:00pm Sergeant Houston gets the search warrant. He details in that search warrant the appearance matching the appearance of the guy captured in surveillance stills on the news. He talked to NYPD Detective Oscar Diaz on the surveillance stills showing Brian Thompson shooters, and Diaz told him about the markings on the shell casings, talked about the victim's position as a health insurance CEO, the flight on the bicycle by the shooter, the defendant providing a fake driver's license to Officer Detwiler, and being in possession of the backpack that morning. And the warrant application did list items that had already been recovered from the defendant's backpack during previous searches, but that information was not necessary to establish probable causes to support the warrant and therefore did not invalidate the warrant. So they're saying this warrant is not tainted by. If. Even if, you know, even if you have an issue with the search, we still have probable cause. And quote, defendant may respond to this argument by claiming the warrantless searches of the backpack were confirmatory searches, unlawful searches that officers carried out to assure themselves that there is cause to obtain a warrant. But the record refutes any such claim. Indeed, as detailed above in points one and two, APD officers believed reasonably in good faith and correctly, that their earlier searches of the backpack were lawful because they did not think that they needed a warrant to search the backpack. Their warrantless searches of the backpack cannot have been designed to access to assess whether they should later apply for a warrant. Sergeant Houston's hearing testimony reinforces this conclusion. He explained that the reason the APD applied for a search warrant was that it needed judicial authorization to transfer the property in question to the nypd. The decision to obtain the warrant was thus not motivated by an interest in justifying APD's previous searches, but rather only to ensure a seamless transfer of the property to another police department. Okay, let's talk about this. So he's saying they didn't get the warrant to be like, oh, no, we're good on the property. They got the warrant because they wanted to make it easier to get it to the NYPD ultimately.
- [68:26]
Kevin Greenlee
Right, that makes sense.
- [68:29]
Anya Cain
And so, and the next point is that this is about statements Mangioni made to the Altoona police officers and Pennsylvania's corrections officers. Mangioni's team is arguing that those should be suppressed, unsurprisingly. Sidenote's like, no, don't suppress those. They say, he says that defendant concedes that his initial statements to Officer detweiler at the McDonald's, providing the false name Mark Rosario and stating he was from New Jersey and admitting that he'd recently been to New York, all admissible. And those statements were made before he was in custody. Even the police were there, but they did not have him in custody. He was allowed to leave at that point, although they would have probably tried to stop him. As detailed below, defendants subsequent statements in McDonald's are likewise admissible. So they said he wasn't in custody. He wasn't subject to custodial interrogation until after he had received his Miranda warnings. To find that a person in custody for Miranda purposes, the court must find both that a reasonable person innocent of any wrongdoing would have believed that he or she was not free to leave, and two, that there had been a forcible seizure which curtails a person's freedom of action to the degree associated with a formal arrest. So that is kind of the parameters for when you need to consider someone, I guess, in custody. Yeah, they say he's not in custody between 9:31am and 9:41am he CL he Mangione is claiming that he was first in custody at 9:30:59am but they note that, quote, over the ensuing 10 minutes, he was simply sitting in a restaurant, occasionally eating his food in the presence of two police officers. None of those circumstances amounted to the type of restraint associated with a formal arrest. What is more, those officers had assured the defendant that they had been called to the McDonald's because he had stayed too long, they were just running his driver's license, that they would then leave. And that a re. And, you know, basically, like, if you're an innocent person in that situation, if you're Kevin Greenlee enjoying your big arch at the local McDonald's, and these two local Indiana officers are accosting you in this way, and, you know, you didn't kill anybody or just that you didn't do anything wrong. How are you feeling eating your big arch?
- [70:52]
Kevin Greenlee
I I, I, I'm just enjoying my dinner.
- [70:56]
Anya Cain
All these friendly officers want to talk to me. I'm a hail fellow. Well met. You're having a great night that night because you didn't do anything wrong. So, yeah, that's, that's there. Like, at that point, an innocent person would be like, all right, once you, once you see that I'm a real person with the driver's license, I'm gonna bounce. You know, you're not thinking, you know, I'm gonna be arrested. Right, right. They also argue he was not in custody. They're doing like a 24 thing where they're going, like, minute by minute here, giving us the timestamps. But defendant was not in custody between 9:41am and 9:47am they say other APD officers begin to arrive. At this point, a bunch of them are gathering outside McDonald's to talk, but only three officers are even around. Mangione Jaeger Fry McCoy. And that's when he's making some of these statements. McCoy, he says. Seidman argues that McCoy didn't ask the defendant anything accusatory. He's still just sitting at the table. He's not handcuffed. He's not shackled, no officers touching him. And, you know, they say, in, in his view, a reasonable person would not think that he was in custody. Do you agree with that? If. Do you have that many officers around you? Do you think that kind of throws that into dispute, or do you tend
- [72:16]
Kevin Greenlee
to agree that the line's getting a little bit blurry?
- [72:20]
Anya Cain
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Because, like, at that point, I might be like, oh, no,
- [72:25]
Kevin Greenlee
this ain't going so well for me.
- [72:27]
Anya Cain
Oh, yeah, I kind of feel like that too. So I don't know. I think it gets dubious the more officers who kind of come in the room, but, you know, it's definitely getting blurrier. Then he says that he's still not in custody between 9:47 and 9:48. That's when Officer Detwiler gives him false ID warnings. And then those warnings specified he was under official police investigation, that if he gave a false name again, he'd be arrested for false id. They asked about his true identity, and, you know, there were more officers around him at that point, but he was still chilling in his McDonald's seat, and nobody had mentioned the New York City murder. No restraints, no officers drawn their weapons. You know, I do think, like, I. Again, I'm not necessarily saying he's in custody there, but I think the more the noose tightens, the more it's debatable in my view. Like, I don't know how I feel about that, to be honest, because if you're surrounded by officers and they're kind of like, hey, we're going to arrest you if you do that again, it's. It's starting to feel more custody. Like, would you agree?
- [73:39]
Kevin Greenlee
Yes, definitely.
- [73:41]
Anya Cain
And 9:48, 32, Officer Fox gives him the Miranda warning. So at that point they say, yeah, he's in custody. Again, I think the Mangione's defense, it makes sense to argue beforehand of like, it's getting more custody ish in here. But, you know, there's. They're obviously going to disagree on that. This side of Min argues that the, that Mangione's pedigree statements are admissible regardless of whether he's in custody. So what are pedigree statements? Those are question requests for pedigree information. That's name, date of birth, address, and those in People v. Were them in 2021, the Court of appeals basically ruled that those generally don't require Miranda warnings. So they're saying those statements shouldn't even be thrown out because they don't really apply anyway. And then they also say Mangioni made a number of kind of spontaneous statements, and those are admissible, according to them, from. Regardless of whether he's in custody or not. So it's basically like the argument of this, to put it bluntly, is like, if this guy won't shut up and we're not asking him to talk to us, that's not our problem.
- [74:54]
Kevin Greenlee
That's his problem.
- [74:55]
Anya Cain
That's him being a chatty Kathy and, you know, making a mistake. You know, if you're. If it's the kind of the penalty for all the yappers out there. If you're gonna be yapping to the police and they're not like interrogating you and you're just saying stuff. This is probably what would happen to me if I got arrested, by the way. So I relate to it.
- [75:14]
Kevin Greenlee
But, you know, the Chatty Cathy, I'd
- [75:16]
Anya Cain
be, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They'd be like, writing it down. I'd be like. And I'd be like, oh, don't use those. And they'd be like, well, you just wouldn't shut up and I'd be really embarrassed. So anyways, that's my nightmare. You talk too much. They say, quote, volunteered statements are admissible provided the defendant spoke with genuine spontaneity and not in response to any inducement, provocation, encouragement or Acquiescence. So the police can't be tricking you or saying like, hey, you suck. Hey. Like, then, like, you know, then you're yelling at them. Or like, like, oh, what do you think about this? Or maybe if you tell us this, we'll let you go. You know, it can't be the police doing anything. It has to just be the person just talking spontaneously, literally. So the, the, what Mangioni wants is that the statements that he had not been in McDonald's long. He wished a McDonald's employee would have said something to him that he would like, advice on what to do next time. And there they said none of those statements were prompted by interrogation. At 9:44am Mangione teased Officer McCoy about the number of police officers at the McDonald's, stating, Calling a couple more cars, this is a puffy jacket. I'm not very big. At 9:56am Mangioni, who had already gotten the Miranda warning at this point, asked McCoy, Can I ask why there's so many cops here? No officer had said anything to elicit those statements. So he's saying, like, you can't, you can't suppress that. Because no one was saying, hey, what do you think about the number of police officers here? Do you have any questions about that? Or, we're all concerned about your puffy coat, that you may be a very big man. You know, like, if they were saying that, then that might be. That certainly would be more of a, you know, debate. I mean, do you agree with that, like, in terms of him being spontaneous there?
- [77:05]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah, those are definitely spontaneous.
- [77:08]
Anya Cain
And they also say that regardless of whether he's in custody, any statements he made about safety related questions. So, you know, like, he challenges, quote, the admissibility of his statement. Sure thing. In response to Officer Fox's request, they stand up for a pat down. But defendant does not explain how such a request could constitute interrogation. In any event, when officers asked defendant whether he had any weapons or when particular items belonged to him, those questions are permitted under Miranda's safety exception, which authorizes officers to, to ask suspects questions reasonably prompted by safety concerns, end quote. So, like, do you have a gun in here? Do you have a bomb? Do you have any weapons? That's a safety issue. That's a public safety issue. That's an officer safety issue. That's a safety issue to the suspect, potentially. So they're saying all those are fine. And then we go to prison, right? We go to the SCI Huntingdon, which is where the defendant spent 10 days in a state prison at a correctional institution and got a lot more security monitoring than he would have a local jail. He's in the rear d a small group of cells for at risk inmates. He was constantly monitored by corrections officers and who had to fill out forms memorializing his movements seven times an hour. So when he was talking with Corrections Officer Henry, these are some things he said. The defendant said he had been arrested in a McDonald's and his backpack contained a 3D printed handgun. And quote, as Henry's uncontradicted testimony demonstrates, none of those statements were prompted by questioning. Quote, Defendant nonetheless asked the court to suppress these statements on the grounds that Corrections Officer Henry's testimony was not credible because it was not plausible. But there was nothing implausible about Henry's testimony. Defendant stresses that it was not until a January 2, 2025, interview with Manhattan district attorney's office that Henry told anybody about defendant's statements about the pistol. That fact, however, only corroborates Henry's steadfast testimony that he had no interest in this case or in conversing with anybody, including defendant, about it. Henry's lack of interest in this case was also apparent from his demeanor at the hearing. And he candidly described himself as agitated about having to appear in court. And his terse testimony on both direct and cross confirmed that he's simply a man of few words, Precisely the kind of corrections officer who would sit silently while an inmate rambled at him. First of all, I would be mortified. My. I would be totally mortified if. If anyone said that about me. But I. I think what they're saying here is, like, this guy doesn't want to talk. This guy was one. So there are two corrections officers. Henry is the guy who did not want to talk to Mangione and did not engage him. And his story was Mangioni's just rambling at me about all these things. And given some of kind of Mangione's glibness to the officers on the body cam footage and whatnot, I think that kind of fits with what we know about sort of how he acts with people. I don't think that's terribly surprising. And kind of like trying to engage this guy in conversation just seems like something that kind of fits that character. But what they're saying, this guy doesn't want to know, he doesn't care, and he, frankly, doesn't really want to get dragged into. I mean, that's something we've seen a lot. Like, people think like, oh, there's certain people who want to insert themselves into a case. And then there are certain people who run screaming. And this is one of those guys. And they're. I guess the defense is saying, like, he's lying because why would Mangioni do that? But, like, I don't know. I think it sounds. I mean, it sounds credible to me. What do you think?
- [80:44]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah, it sounds credible to me as well.
- [80:47]
Anya Cain
Then there's Corrections Officer Rivers. This guy's a Chatty Cathy, so. But they're saying even though he was chatting with Mangione, his. The statements that he got from Angioni or that Mangioni gave to him were not the product of inducement, provocation, or encouragement. Rivers was on duty. He and Mangione would talk. They would talk about travel, healthcare, books. At one point, Mangioni asked Rivers how he was being perceived in the media, which is like, okay. River says the media was focused on the crime, but social media was focused on how bad health care is. Mangioni said that he heard he was being compared to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. He reviewed one of Kaczynski's books on Goodreads, and he also mentioned that he wanted to make a statement to the public. And this is what Sideman says about it. To be sure, Corrections Officer Rivers appears to have been more willing than Corrections Officer Henry to chat with Defendant. But the mere fact that Rivers exchange words with Defendant does not render Defendant statements inadmissible. The questioning of an inmate does not automatically constitute custodial interrogation for Miranda purposes. Rather, Miranda warnings are required only when there are restrictions on an inmate's freedom over and above ordinary confinement in a correctional facility. Defendant instead argues that Corrections Officer Rivers violated his right to counsel by chatting with him. To be sure, when an inmate is represented on a pending charge, custodial interrogation about a subject must cease. In the absence of counseled waiver. Even a voluntary statement not made in response to express questioning by investigators will not necessarily be admissible. Rather, the statements of an inmate who is represented on a pending charge can be admitted only if they were in no way the product of an interrogation environment, the result of express questioning, or the functional equivalent. The testimony of Corrections Officer Rivers demonstrates that his casual conversations with Defendant involved neither an interrogation environment nor express questioning or the functional equivalent. As Rivers explained at the hearing, he had no interest in this case. And though Defendant criticizes Rivers for not memorializing their conversations, that fact only demonstrates that Rivers was indeed engaging in casual, natural conversation rather than seeking to elicit incriminating information. The range of topics covered in Their conversations, from travel to nationalized healthcare to book recommendations, strengthens the conclusion that Rivers made no effort to elicit any particular kind of information from defendant. And insofar as the defendant's statement touched upon matters related to the case, the substance of those statements, such as his question about how the media was portraying him and his complaint about being compared to Ted Kaczynski, corroborates Rivers testimony that defendants simply volunteered them. Furthermore, the absence of any discussion of the actual crime reinforces the conclusion that Rivers made no effort to elicit information on that subject, end quote.
- [83:36]
Kevin Greenlee
So in other words, it's not like this guy Rivers was acting as an unofficial police interrogator, trying to drill down on information about why'd you do it? Why'd you do it? Admit you did it, or anything like that. He was just having relatively normal chit chat.
- [83:53]
Anya Cain
That's right. That's what he's claiming. That's what they're claiming. So. So Seidman's ultimate conclusion. The defendant's motion should be denied in its entirety. Throw that out. Don't throw out any of our evidence. Just throw out what they're saying. There was a brief response on March 16th from Karen Friedman, Agnifilo, Mark Agnifolo, and Jacob Kaplan. That is Luigi Mangione's.
- [84:17]
Kevin Greenlee
This was only like. Only like nine pages as compared to the prosecutions, which was like over a hundred. Right.
- [84:22]
Anya Cain
And there's a good reason for that. The defense has already laid out many of their claims that the prosecution has already responded to. They wanted to take this brief just to focus on arguments regarding warrantless searches. They felt like their opening brief should stand alone for arguments regarding Luigi Mangione's statements. So they're just really trying to narrow in on this. Get to get that in front of the judge. I'll read briefly from this and then we can kind of wrap up. So they contend still that the warrantless McDonald's search was improper. And what. What they're saying is, first quote, patrolman Detwiler testified at the suppression hearing that he knew from the moment Mr. Mangione lowered his mask that he was a New York City shooter. From that moment, Altoona law enforcement knew that their actions would have consequences under New York search and seizure law because Mr. Mangione would ultimately be prosecuted in New York for an alleged murder that occurred in New York. This was certainly clear to Altoona law enforcement when Lt. Hannely reached out numerous times to the New York law enforcement while he was at McDonald's. Consequently, the consequence. Consequently, the prosecution's claim that Altoona law enforcement cannot be expected to anticipate which state's search and seizure law will govern in interaction with a particular defendant has no merit. As they knew while at the McDonald's that their conduct would implicate New York law, Altoona police officers were in near constant contact throughout the day with elite, experienced New York law enforcement experts, were intimately familiar with New York law and who advised them. Thus, there was no need for them to have any knowledge of New York law. So that's their first point. Hey, you could have called the NYPD after you got in contact with them because they weren't picking up at first. Then second, they say that it's not a reasonable search at McDonald's because it's not even good under Pennsylvania law. And that is because, quote, the hearing testimony established that it was Altoona law enforcement policy to search all bags when a defendant is arrested without consideration for whether bag was in the immediate control of the defendant at the time of the arrest or what the defendant was arrested for. This is not a reasonable application of Pennsylvania law which limits a search incident to a lawful arrest to a person arrested in the area within his immediate control. End quote. So they argue that still the prosecution's arguing the search is valid incident to arrest because the backpack was in Mangione's possession. Quote. In making this argument, the prosecution relies on an unpublished opinion from the Superior Court of Pennsylvania in Commonwealth v. Dunbar that noted that a search incident to a lawful arrest can be valid if the bag was in the defendant's immediate area at the time the police had un had probable cause to arrest him. Notably, this case specifically notes that it is a non precedential decision. Moreover, to the extent Dunbar would permit searches incident to a lawful arrest, even when the defendant's bag is not on the defendant's person or in the area within his immediate control the time of his arrest. This decision is not consistent with Supreme Court precedent set in Chimal v. California, United States v. Chadwick, Arizona v. Gantt, all cited in Mr. Mangione's opening brief. Third, Altoona law enforcement's reliance on Pennsylvania law is irrelevant because, as argued in Mr. Mangione's opening brief, New York search and seizure law applies where New York is the forum state, which it undoubtedly is here. In response, the prosecution argues that the numerous cases cited by Mr. Mangione are distinguishable because those cases only held that evidence was admissible in New York when it was properly obtained under New York law, but in violation of another state's search and seizure law. That, however, is a distinction without a difference, as the cases cited by Mr. Mangioni unambiguously stand for the proposition that suppression issues, including those arising out of a defendant's constitutional rights, are generally governed by the law of the forum. And New York has a paramount interest in the application of laws to this case. The statement of law is true. Whether applying New York search and seizure laws leads to suppression or whether it leads to admitting the evidence here, for all the reasons stated in Mr. Mangione's opening brief, applying New York law leads to suppression. What do we think about those points?
- [88:44]
Kevin Greenlee
Basically, it almost feels like we're in a couple of different universes, because where they're arguing, the prosecution said, well, these. These cases say this, and they're saying, no, actually, these cases say this. So it would be very interesting to see how the judge ultimately comes down on this. What do you make of it, Anya?
- [89:04]
Anya Cain
Well, I'm not a lawyer, so, yeah, I mean, I can. I mean, I can see what they're saying. You know, I. When the prosecution, like, lays it out as sort of like what we're expecting Pennsylvania cops to, like, be doing everything under New York law, like, that does sound kind of unreasonable. But when we look at the defense's point, they're like, yeah, but it's a New York case. I don't know. I mean, like, I don't really have a super strong opinion. I think it's interesting to see the back and forth. It's kind of like a tennis game. It feels like. It sort of feels like it's hard to believe that a lot of this stuff would get suppressed. I feel like there's enough avenues for it coming in that I would be surprised if a lot of it got suppressed.
- [89:45]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah, that's. That. That's where I'm at.
- [89:48]
Anya Cain
That doesn't mean that none of the defense's arguments are good, though, or that they don't have a point. It's more like, I just think there's a lot that would bring this in.
- [89:58]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah. Mr. Mangione. Mr. Mangione's attorneys are very good, and they're doing fine work here.
- [90:07]
Anya Cain
So there's a couple other points they made that I wanted to go over. They say the prosecution next argues that the warrantless search at the McDonald's was not improper because the officers were reasonably concerned that the backpack contained explosives. This argument is belied by the officer's own actions. As argued more fully in Mr. Mangioni's opening brief, the totality of the Circumstances demonstrates that the officer's claim about the bomb was a blatantly false and pretextual justification for conducting an evidentiary search. For example, during this alleged bomb search, patrol woman Wasser and patrolman Fox purposely searched area items they knew could not have contained a bomb, such as a small bag containing Mr. Mangioni's passport and envelope, a wallet, and a cardboard container, admittedly too small to contain a bomb. Moreover, law enforcement never cleared the McDonald's and instead allowed customers and employees to walk freely through the back area of the McDonald's where the supposed bomb would have been located. Most tellingly, patrolwomen Wasser and patrolman Fox stopped their alleged bomb search once they found the gun magazine, even though they had not searched the entire backpack. For these and other reasons stated in Mr. Mangione's opening brief, this court should find that the alleged bomb search was nothing more than a false and pretextual justification for an evidentiary search of Mr. Mangione's backpack. And similarly, the prosecution's claim that Altoona law enforcement was justified in searching the backpack because they were concerned that it contained a gun is meritless and not supported by the record. The evidence at the suppression hearing included hours worth of body worn camera footage from seven different officers. no point in any of this footage is there any statement from any law enforcement member that they were searching the backpack because they were concerned it might contain a gun. Instead, the only stated concern patrolman Wasser, patrol woman Wasser and patrolman Fox gave for searching the backpack at the McDonald's was to make sure it did not contain a bomb. And they're saying that's a post hoc excuse, the law enforcement advance of the suppression hearing to justify the warrantless search. You know, like, I hear what they're saying, but, like, I. I don't know, like, if you think it's the guy. I certainly think being concerned about a gun, even if you're not yelling about that in your body camera footage, is reasonable. Like, you think he's the guy who shot a guy. As far as the bomb issue, I don't know. I mean, what do you think about not clearing the restaurant?
- [92:27]
Kevin Greenlee
I think that in. If you wanted to clear a restaurant, you'd have to have a higher standard of, of proof. No one is saying that they have probable cause to believe there was a bomb in the bag, Just that they had, you know, reason to think that.
- [92:44]
Anya Cain
Or like, we need to check this.
- [92:46]
Kevin Greenlee
Yes.
- [92:46]
Anya Cain
You know, and I mean, if I were looking through something, I wouldn't. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily know, like, how big a bomb was. So I don't know if I'd like, as far as, like, oh, they're looking through stuff that's too small for a bomb. Like, I don't know. That doesn't really move me that much. As far as they say the precinct searches were also improper because the search of the backpack was not consistent, the conduct was not consistent with an inventory search and demonstrated that she knew where the gun would be located before she even opened that portion of the backpack. This is also evidence that the fact that patrol woman Wasser started the search on a metal chair in a corner where there was limited space and no room to conduct an actual inventory search. She also started this alleged inventory search without any evidence bags or tags, despite knowing from her warrantless McDonald's search of the backpack was filled with a large amount of Mr. Mangioni's personal property. Again, this seems a little bit conspiratorial. I don't know. Like, oh, she knew where the gun would be. Like, there's no real evidence for that. Like, she unzips the thing and finds the gun. Like, I don't know. They also argue that they the New York Court of Appeals has ruled while incriminating evidence may be a consequence of an inventory search, it should not be its purpose. Here is the prosecution admits Patrolwoman Wasser's hallway search was done with specific intention of locating and separating out incriminating evidence. This intention was further demonstrated by the fact that Patrolwoman Wasser did not catalog any of the non evidentiary items, just and just crammed them back into the backpack after she separated them out what she believed was incriminating evidence that is not a proper inventory search. They also take issue with the Patrolman Featherstones office search and they had a bunch of arguments for why that was improper. But they wanted to address the prosecution's claim that the officers properly read through the writings. And they argued that even assuming the Altoona general orders authorized an inventory search of Mr. Mangione's backpack, it would only have authorized officers to remove the journal from the backpack and note that a journal was recovered. It would not allow officers to read through the journal. The District Attorney's office does not respond to this argument. Instead, the prosecution only responds, albeit ineffectively, the council's argument in Mr. Mangione's opening claims that Mr. Mangione did not have an exception of privacy expectation of privacy in his journal because Patrolwoman Wasser had already surveyed its contents in order to assess whether it should be processed as personal property or evidence. This argument is puzzling on several levels. First, a review of Patrolman woman Wasser's body camera footage demonstrates that Wasser flipped through the journal for less than 20 seconds before stating, it's like a journal. She did not read through all the journal entries like sergeant Houston and Sergeant Burns did. Second, to the extent Patrolwoman Wasser read any part of the journal in those 18 seconds, she also exceeded her authority under the Altoona general orders, end quote. So taking issue with that as well and saying they shouldn't have looked through the diary, citing People v. Somerville and United States v. Santos. And in Somerville and Santos, quote, the court suppressed the writings because the officers exceeded the parameters of a permissible inventory search by reading the contents to help with their investigation. This is exactly what Sergeant Burns and Houston did in this case. As they admitted at the hearing, they read portions of the journal because they believe those portions were relevant to the New York investigation. Sergeant Burns testified they had read some of the journal just out of curiosity, saw the pages labeled blog and others with miscellaneous writings and photograph pages that he thought were relevant to the New York investigation, and then saying that the subsequent search warrant does not cure the illegal searches. Quote the prosecution claims that whether the warrantless searches were proper or not, the backpack evidence should be admissible under the independent source doctrine because sergeant Houston obtained a search warrant for the contents of the backpack at 6pm on the day of the arrest, more than eight hours after Altoona law enforcement started conducting the warrantless searches of the backpack. As the Court of Appeals has ruled, however, the presence of an independent source for a warrant and subsequent search does not automatically immunize an initial warrantless search and ensure the admissibility of evidence eventually sees pursuant to the warrant. They cite a People v. Erna. In Arna, an undercover officer purchased cocaine from the defendant's apartment. While at the apartment, the undercover officer observed a large quantity of cocaine. 35 minutes later, officers entered the building and arrested the defendant. At that time, the officers did not search for evidence and no evidence was discovered or seized. Forty minutes later, other officers responded to the scene to secure the apartment while officers met with the District Attorney's office to prepare a search warrant application. Search warrant application reflected only information obtained from the undercover officer with respect to type, quality and location of the contraband which he observed in the defendant's apartment and nothing observed by the police officers under upon their initial entry into defendant's apartment was mentioned in the affidavit. Based on this warrant, officers searched the defendant's apartment and recovered a plastic bag of cocaine, a large amount of marijuana and a drug scale. In denying the defendant's suppression motion, the court of appeals noted that the evidence was obtained based on a search warrant that was based solely on information obtained prior to an independent of the illegal entry, namely the undercover officer's observations from inside the apartment. In denying the def in the Arno court further noted that the search warrant was obtained based solely on information obtained by the undercover officer prior to an independent of the illegal entry. Since there is not the slightest hint that the search warrant was in any way tainted by the illegal entry or that the police exploited the entry in an effort to obtain evidence, we hold that the evidence seized is not the fruit of the poisonous tree, that the exclusionary rule is therefore inapplicable in this case. And so they distinguish R Naught from this case. And they say that this search warrant relies heavily on the warrantless searches. So it's tainted. And so they are. They're asking that the court grants the relief and suppresses this evidence. So what's next? The next hearing will be May 18th. Judge Gregory Caro will is expected to issue his decision about suppression and suppressing all this stuff. And there's been some moving around of the calendar of this case. My understanding is that Caro has moved back this trial from June 8 to September 8, 2026. And in addition, Judge Margaret Garnett, who is the judge for the federal case, she has initially indicated she was not going to push it back, but now has indicated that jury selection will start January 5, 2027, and opening statements will be. I'm sorry. Jury selection will start January 5th, and opening statements will be January 25th, 2027. So that is the latest of the law, I guess. Overall, who. Whose arguments did you find more compelling? I feel like the defense. We only kind of heard a brief summary of their stuff, so I don't want to, like, bias against them. I think they raised some decent points. I feel like their stuff was put together, you know, like they're. They're citing some cases, too. To me, it just feels like there's so many avenues for it to come in that I think it mostly will. It's possible some stuff will get suppressed.
- [100:18]
Kevin Greenlee
That's where I'm at.
- [100:19]
Anya Cain
I could see some stuff getting suppressed for. For various reasons. For some reason. One thing that I feel like the correction guard talking to him could be complicated, and I could see that almost getting suppressed. But that's just my. I'm. I'm basing that off of nothing.
- [100:34]
Kevin Greenlee
And, yeah, I think it's likely to come in. I think the. The defense team is doing a good job of vigorously representing their client. None of the things they're. They're saying or arguing are completely unreasonable. I think it's all worth consideration, But I think at the end of the day, most, if not all of this stuff will come in.
- [100:58]
Anya Cain
Yeah. And I think this is a case where I personally view it as a lot of evidence against Mangione. Like, probably in most cases, what I would consider a devastating amount of evidence against Mangione. I think the thing that makes me not necessarily know what's going to happen in this case is I think there's, like, first of all, I think he's going to trial. I don't feel like there's going to be a plea deal here. And I also feel like there's. How do I say this. This case more than a lot of cases. I think there's, like, a possibility of, like, some kind of jury nullification. I'm not saying that that's going to happen.
- [101:39]
Kevin Greenlee
I'm just saying when you say jury nullification, can you explain to people what that means?
- [101:44]
Anya Cain
Oh, man. You're asking me to define legal terms. Come on. I'm just a simple reporter. But basically, it's like the jury comes back with an acquittal. They are essentially nullifying the law. They're not. They don't really think he didn't do it. They're just saying, like, you know, it's like a. It's. They're basically saying, like, we're just gonna do this. Like, we basically approve of what he did.
- [102:12]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah.
- [102:13]
Anya Cain
Now, I don't think they would be nullifying the law of murder. I think most people agree that, like, murder is a crime. It would be more of a referendum on the healthcare system. I. When I talk to people about this case, there is so much widespread anger. I hear a lot of people basically being kind of like, well, good. And I'm not even weighing in on that. I'm not saying that in judgment. I'm not saying that, like, where I agree or disagree. I'm simply observing that. And now when you actually sit down a jury and you're kind of like, hey, guys, murder's still really bad. I think most juries are going to be like, yeah, we kind of have to, you know, like, look at stuff, you know, fairly, even if we had a really bad experience with healthcare. But there's enough of widespread, commonplace anger about this subject that I just think it's more of A possibility in this case than a lot of cases. And it wouldn't be as much of an issue if Brian Thompson had been the CEO of a different kind of industry. There's certainly class unrest and sort of like resentment towards uber wealthy individuals. But I don't think that is as searing hot a unifying issue as everybody hates health insurance. I don't know anybody who's like, yeah, I love my health insurance, love the company who does it. You know, you're either like actively aggrieved or you've been aggrieved in the past or like you're okay now, but you still feel like you're way overpaying. So, you know, I mean, I don't know. What do you think? Am I, am I, am I getting too crazy here?
- [103:53]
Kevin Greenlee
No, I, I think that's a realistic prognosis.
- [103:57]
Anya Cain
I don't feel like it's necessarily going to happen. I, I think it's, you know, I think that stuff is not super common, but I just think it's. If it's going to be a case, it's going to be this case. But anyways. But I mean, other than that, I do feel like the evidence against him is pretty strong and overwhelming. You know, again, it, A lot of that will. That's why the suppression hearing so important. Because if the defense can knock some of that out, it vastly improves the chances.
- [104:24]
Kevin Greenlee
Exactly.
- [104:25]
Anya Cain
Because some of it's pretty damning. If they can get damning evidence removed, that's a huge win for Mangione's team.
- [104:31]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah. One of the reasons why it's so important to pay attention to the pre trial phase is that a lot of the decisions that are made before the trial really determine what happens at the trial and even has a direct impact on what the ultimate outcome of the case is.
- [104:48]
Anya Cain
Absolutely. Well, thank you all so much for listening. We really appreciate it and hope you enjoyed the episode.
- [104:54]
Kevin Greenlee
Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com. if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [105:14]
Anya Cain
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet we very much appreciate any support.
- [105:38]
Kevin Greenlee
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com if you're looking to talk with
- [105:49]
Anya Cain
other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet Discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.