Luigi Mangione from Pennsylvania found himself in a surprising situation when the police arrested him at a McDonald’s in Altoona. His lawyer claims that the cops offered him a snack as a ploy to collect his DNA.
Furthermore, Mangione’s attorney accuses the police of violating his rights by taking his bag and searching through his possessions. The police went on to announce to the public that they had discovered a “manifesto” in his possession.
Attorney Thomas Dickey said the cops who first approached Mangione that morning, Dec. 9, did not even have proper legal justification.
Those accusations are included in documents filed this week in connection with the charges Mangione faces in Pennsylvania.
Currently, Mangione is in New York City, awaiting trial for his alleged involvement in the shooting of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4th.
Mangione will first have to stand trial both in federal and state courts in New York on charges stemming from the homicide.
The documents filed in Pennsylvania relate only to the lesser charges filed when he was first arrested, but the accusations against police in Altoona could end up becoming part of the New York case.
In a 36-page filing asking the court to exclude evidence against Mangione, Dickey says Altoona officers’ “combined actions” at the McDonalds were “designed to not only exhibit their authority and control over [Mangione], but to also to restrict and totally curtail his liberty,” Dickey said, arguing at the time of the seizure and arrest, the officers “lacked reasonable suspicion to engage in such activity.”
“Any reasonable person, innocent of any crime, would have thought that he was being restrained if he had been in the Defendant’s shoes,” Dickey said, adding the officers’ actions violated Mangione’s constitutional rights.
The lawyer is arguing that Mangione’s DNA samples are “poisonous fruits” of an illegal search and must be excluded from the Pennsylvania case.
As for Mangione’s belongings that were seized, Dickey said police obtained various writings, including a red notebook and other handwritten papers. Those documents indicated the accused assailant had been developing a fixation and increasing malice towards United Healthcare and had been talking about harming its CEO for months, law enforcement sources have previously told ABC News.
“The Altoona Police Department illegally seized a notebook which allegedly contained numerous personal writings covering a plethora of personal experiences of [Mangione],” his lawyer said.
“This characterization of [Mangione’s] alleged personal experiences and writings is incorrect, improper, and without justification and has no probative value,” his lawyer Dickey said – and calling it a “manifesto,” the lawyer wrote, “was done so solely for the purpose to prejudice [Mangione] and put him in a negative light before the public; all in an effort to prejudice any potential jury pool.”
Mangione is accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in front of the Hilton in Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024, in an act that prosecutors said was premeditated, targeted and “intended to evoke terror.” He has pleaded not guilty to state charges. He has not yet entered a plea to federal charges.
He faces three separate prosecutions: the New York state murder case; another for federal charges, including terrorism; and a third in Pennsylvania on charges including possessing an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. One of his federal charges, murder through use of a firearm, makes Mangione eligible for the death penalty if convicted, but he has not yet been indicted in federal court.
His lawyer in New York, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, has already presaged some of the arguments his Pennsylvania lawyer now has made with her words in a Manhattan courtroom last month, that there are “very serious issues” with how police in Pennsylvania obtained evidence from her client.
In this week’s filings, the Pennsylvania defense attorney also argued that when police confronted Mangione in the Altoona McDonalds, it was premised on pure speculation and “based on a hunch.”
When Altoona police were dispatched to the burger chain they were responding to a call about a “‘suspicious male that resembled the suspect who shot the CEO in New York.’ He was described as wearing a beanie and a medical mask.”
The call came after a five-day manhunt for the CEO killer, but “other than the anonymous 911 call,” Altoona police “had no independent corroborating evidence that [Mangione] was in fact the suspect sought in New York, prior to, or at the time of their stop and/or the investigatory detention of” his client,” Dickey said.
Altoona officers “had no objective grounds for said detention, other than a hunch and/or unparticularized suspicion,” he added.
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