Marathon proceedings in Luigi Mangione’s state homicide case came to a close Thursday, as Manhattan prosecutors and lawyers for the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson rested without calling any more witnesses.
The parties won’t learn for some time which positions prevailed, with state Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro asking each side to submit final written arguments and indicating he would rule on Mangione’s motions to suppress evidence central to the prosecution’s case by May 18.
The hearings included 17 witnesses and centered on evidence recovered and statements Mangione made to Pennsylvania law enforcement surrounding his arrest five days after Thompson’s killing. Mangione was nabbed at a McDonald’s in the city of Altoona, more than 200 miles from the Hilton hotel in Midtown, outside which the CEO was shot dead Dec. 4, 2024.
Lawyers for Mangione have argued that Altoona cops, excited by the high-profile bust amid a nationwide manhunt, rashly conducted a warrantless search of his belongings, and that a .9mm pistol, silencer, notebook entries allegedly laying out plans to kill the exec, among other items, were unlawfully recovered and should thus be barred from the Manhattan District Attorney’s case.
It was alleged at the proceedings that cops also found a “to-do” list on Mangione’s person — including a note to “pluck eyebrows” — and writings laying out possible “escape routes.”
The Manhattan DA’s position is that the search was lawful as Mangione was being arrested and cops needed to ensure he wasn’t carrying any dangerous items. Several officers who testified maintained that they were following a Pennsylvania law that permits officers to search a suspect’s person and items they have on them as a precaution.
Cops came upon Mangione eating a hash brown after responding to a 911 call by a McDonald’s manager who reported customers had recognized “the CEO shooter from New York,” according to audio and body-worn camera footage played at the hearings. Officers testified they had no doubt he was the suspect wanted for the shooting and tried to stall him while they strategized.
The 27-year-old handed over a New Jersey state driver’s license under the name Mark Rosario, which officers quickly determined was bogus, footage showed. After warning him he could face arrest for handing over a fake ID, Mangione confessed his real name and was placed in handcuffs under suspicion of carrying a forged document.
According to charging documents in the case and a federal prosecution playing out parallel to it, Mangione checked into an Upper West Side hostel 10 days before Thompson’s killing with the Rosario ID.
During the 19 minutes that lapsed between cops first approaching Mangione at a corner table and taking him into custody, the Maryland man made a number of statements. His lawyers want Carro to bar those remarks and others from the case as he hadn’t been informed of his Miranda right to stay silent.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and related offenses in the case that carries a potential life sentence. In September, Carro knocked off terrorism counts that had topped the indictment, finding prosecutors had misapplied a statute enacted in the days following 9/11 in alleging he sought to influence government policy through intimidation.
The DA’s office alleges that Mangione came to the city to stake out the CEO in the weeks before the killing to execute plans he’d laid out in personal writings — what they’ve called a “manifesto” — about wanting to “whack” a CEO at the “annual parasitic bean-counter convention.”
Mangione, an Ivy League computer science grad with no prior criminal record, was in the exec’s presence near the crime scene in the 24 hours preceding the shooting, prosecutors have alleged. Surveillance footage taken by the Hilton captured them walking past one another at around 7:47 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2024.
Early the next morning, a masked figure shot Thompson in the back as the CEO arrived to set up for an investor conference then calmly walked away, footage played in court showed. The 50-year-old father of two teen boys, who was based in Minnesota, was named as CEO of the U.S.’s largest health insurer in 2021 after almost two decades at the company.
Prosecutors say Mangione fled the scene on a bike through Central Park and then cabbed it from W. 86th St. and Amsterdam Ave. to a bus station further uptown. Carro heard during the hearings that Altoona cops found a bus ticket to Pittsburgh on Mangione’s person — with the name “Sam Dawson” and an ETA the night after Thompson’s killing.
The marathon proceedings kicked off what’s set to be a long and winding road to legal closure on the circumstances of Thompson’s killing.
Mangione faces accusations that he stalked the healthcare exec before fatally shooting him in a federal death penalty case brought by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which is expected to go to trial after DA Alvin Bragg’s case. Mangione also maintains his innocence in that case.
Mangione’s team has asked Manhattan Federal Judge Margarett Garnett to bar the Trump Justice Department from seeking capital punishment through the charge of murder through the use of a firearm. If their effort fails and he’s convicted of it, he would face a second trial of sorts in what’s known as the death penalty phase, in which a jury would decide if the state should execute him.
Leading Mangione’s defense in both cases are Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former Manhattan DA prosecutor, and her husband, veteran defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo, who this summer convinced a federal jury to acquit Sean “Diddy” Combs of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have sent him to prison for life. The mogul was convicted of prostitution offenses and sentenced to four years.
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