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Notes -
Apparently some stuff has been happening with Luigi Mangione lately; the front page of reddit is filled to the brim with pictures of the guy, and today I saw posts showing part of his arrest video (full video here, but does not contain the full arrest), and finding that he had a ticket for a bus to Pittsburgh on the night of the shooting, and also that the bullets in the bag were what made him a suspect for the CEO killing.
I am seeing some commonalities in all these threads: either hedged understanding/support for Mangione's actions, outright support, and extreme skepticism of the police along with claims that Mangione was framed or otherwise dastardly policing tricks were pulled on him. Police misconduct claims include that the backpack with gun and manifesto was planted on him and that they used an illegal method to find him, yet are claiming that an anonymous caller recognized him and tipped them off.
I find it interesting how pervasive these claims are. My own brother actually has told me that the backpack was likely planted on Mangione, (part of a wider array of left-wing conspiracy theories; he also was the first I'd seen state that the Trump assassination was one random attendee shooting another random attendee and accidentally wounding Trump, then later stating that it was the teleprompter glass that injured him, not the bullet itself). It's true, it's a little hard to believe that a murder suspect would keep such dangerous incriminating evidence on him in the face of a nationwide manhunt. However, I think a murderer might not make moves that someone might expect them to, and I also think that police officers have to be cautious in following the rules when it comes to the entire U.S. news media and also defense lawyers watching their every move carefully.
The thought strikes me that this is probably going to be
one of the most televised court affairs since Rittenhouse.apparently not televised since it's in federal court, but everything that comes out will be highly scrutinized, at least. This time, for the first time in many years, it seems that this is a more Left-aligned murder trial. I desperately hope he gets convicted, but anything could happen. There are many ways he could get acquitted, including plain-and-simple jury nullification, which is definitely a possibility on account of his popularity.I think the issue here is that we're finding out now how much of a hash the police in Altoona made of the initial arrest, and the fact that so much of the key evidence stems from this arrest makes the prosecution a little dicier than it seemed initially. When the arrest first occurred it appeared to me, based on the reporting, that Mangione had consented to a search, which makes sense because anyone stupid enough to carry obviously incriminating evidence around with him for several days after committing murder would probably also be stupid enough to consent to a search. Now it looks like the police may have not obtained consent and instead relied on specious reasoning to determine they had probable cause and didn't need a warrant.
Now, whether this was a mistake is theoretical, because it doesn't appear to me that they would have had any justification to either get a search warrant or detain him based on an identification of a McDonald's employee who had never seen him before. The police were under pressure to investigate every lead, no matter how improbable, and I doubt they wanted it to come out later that someone had identified a mystery man whom they had questioned briefly but had eventually gotten away with a backpack that may have had incriminating evidence in it. Anyway, I suspect the judge will find the search justified and allow the case to go to trial because it's obvious that Mangione is guilty and any technicalities are an issue for the appellate court. But it looks like the police may have actually fucked up here.
The police would have also seen the surveillance images of the suspect, and could ID him themselves once they saw him based on the McDonald's tip, no?
If I remember right, the only images those officers had seen were (1) where he was wearing a mask and (2) poor quality / unusual angle - so a confident positive ID is unlikely. Now, Mangione did fuck up by presenting the police a fake ID, the same one he used for the hostel he stayed at in NY which gives them cause for arrest, but the police didn't get a search warrant before searching his backpack which is a big screw up.
The images are here: https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2024/12/b73a00e1-472a-4bda-9d4e-16efbd624c61_1920x1080-800x450.jpg
I would think that if you are standing talking to this guy you could form a pretty good probable cause based on those? You're not like counting nose-hairs, but he seems pretty recognizable.
And as pusher_robot points out, once the cops have probable cause, the next thing the will do is arrest you! And then they can search your stuff (that you are carrying) without a warrant. (may be some exceptions, but I think a heavy-ish backpack in the possession of a guy who probably just assassinated a dude with a silenced pistol would not be one)
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Why wouldn't that be covered as a search incident to arrest?
Depends on when the arrest and search occurred. Police in my state have screwed this up before by doing the following:
-Detaining someone to investigate something suspicious (specifically a misdemeanor where an arrest is not mandatory)
-Searching the suspect's backpack
-Arresting on the misdemeanor + what was found in backpack
-Charges on the felony stuff in the backpack get dismissed because officers can't show they would've inevitably discovered the backpack's contents because the arrest on the misdemeanor wasn't mandatory
It's only a search incident to arrest if there's a valid arrest first. If detaining Mangione on suspicion of a fake ID wasn't a mandatory arrest type of offense and he was only detained and not arrested, then it's possible they searched the bag too early.
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