One year after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the court is now weighing whether police violated alleged gunman Luigi Mangione’s Miranda rights.
One year after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the court is now weighing whether police violated alleged gunman Luigi Mangione’s Miranda rights.
The key dispute is that the State thinks that Mangione wasn’t “detained” until after the ID check came back as fake. Mr. Mangione argues that he was “detained” from the very start of the interaction because the police positioned themselves to block his only route of exit.
In between those two times, Mangione made some statements that the defense would like to suppress, but nothing like a full confession or anything.
There may also be an issue that the first Miranda warning that the cop gave in the McDonald’s was only the first half of the warning. The right to remain silent part, but not the attorney part. I haven’t followed closely enough to know if the defense is arguing that or not.
Thanks for explaining. The article alone didn’t make it sound like the defense had a leg to stand on, but your wording shows that maybe they can get something here…
If he wasn’t detained, why was he blocked in, and why would he have given ID to the pigs? I think we would want to see body camera footage on this, and so would the judge, and depending on the details it’s quite possible that the fake ID charge and evidence could all be suppressed. Judges tend to be overly kind to the pigs, but not always.
And it doesn’t even matter if the pigs said or didn’t say “You’re detained.” If they asked him for ID but a reasonable person in his view would not have felt like they were free to leave, that was a detention, and the legal questions would need to be addressed.
I don’t know what the law is in Pennsylvania, but some states have a law that you must present ID on request if you have it. Nearly all jurisdictions require you to correctly state your name and address to police on request.
And the police here used a ruse that this was all just a McDonald’s loitering complaint. The cop admitted on the stand that the loitering thing was a lie. But that’s okay. Remember: the cops are allowed to lie to you, but you are not allowed to lie to the cops.
Remember also: stating the false name orally is a separate crime from the forged instrument.
So bottom line, the failure to Mirandize could suppress the statements where he confessed to the fake ID and to the fake name. But it’s not going to toss those charges. And it doesn’t suppress the action of handing over the ID, because that’s not a statement.
So there’s a pretty strong case for the ID charge even without the statements.
they get pretty aggressive if you dont have an ID on you
They want the search of his bag to be ruled out as evidence. The bag contained the murder weapon and his personal notes, which were likely incriminating.
That’s actually a much bigger deal for Mangione at this hearing than the Miranda warning issue.
That seems like more of an uphill battle. Even if the search incident to arrest is illegal, the defense also has to prove that the feds would not have inevitably gotten the search warrant for the backpack anyway.
The sequence of events with the backpack was:
12 minutes into the McDonald’s interaction, the cops moved the backpack some distance away from him, and put themselves between Mangione and the backpack.
While still in the McDonald’s a local cop opened the backpack, searched all the inside compartments, and found the key items, including the gun. The cops say this was an inventory search incident to arrest.
She then put the gun back in the backpack and zipped it back up. This is a clue that the cops were actually worried about the legality of the search.
They took the whole backpack back to the police station.
The same cop then searched the backpack again at the police station, and magically found the same gun that she had put back into the backpack. Still no warrant.
7 hours later, Altoona PD applied for and received a warrant to search the backpack.
Despite the preposterousness of this sequence, if the prosecution can show that the team that applied for the warrant was not excessively tainted by prior knowledge of the gun or notebook, they can probably still use the evidence.
How do you know it’s the murder weapon? Why do you think the notes are likely incriminating?
Well I’m essentially citing the article, but your questions are not relevant to the point I was trying to make.
Alright, they do call the notes that, but calling that gun “the murder weapon” is inappropriate. It robs Mangione of his presumption of innocence.
I have a much bigger problem with calling that gun “the murder weapon” anyways. That’s the bigger issue of the two.
Explain to us what point you were trying to make by misrepresenting allegations as established fact, then.