As The Sun reported, the last time the 27-year-old Ivy League graduate appeared in court was in September, when the presiding judge, Gregory Carro, dismissed the two terrorism charges brought against Mr. Mangione by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, including a first-degree murder charge that could have put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Mr. Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty, remains in serious trouble. He is charged with second-degree murder, for which he faces a prison sentence of 25 years to life in addition to nine other charges. He also faces charges of the same crime in federal court, where prosecutors are seeking something New York prosecutors cannot: the death penalty.
Monday’s court appearance marks almost exactly one year to the day since Thompson was killed on a Midtown Manhattan street. In the early morning hours of December 4, 2024, Thompson was shot in the back as he headed to an investor conference at the Hilton Hotel. The Twin Cities-based father of two died at the hospital about half an hour later. The killer immediately fled the scene, leading to a manhunt that lasted five days.
Defense attorneys allege that when Mr. Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s outside Altoona, a city in Blair County, Pennsylvania, five days after the killing, the arresting officers unlawfully seized evidence “because law enforcement officers searched Mr. Mangione’s backpack without a warrant, in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, after he was already handcuffed and surrounded by 10 police officers,” the lawyers wrote in a motion filed May 1.
Inside the backpack, the arresting officers reportedly found a 3D-printed gun, which the New York Police Department said matched the shell casings found at the crime scene. Another key item the arresting officers collected was a notebook with handwritten notes purported to contain a confession to the murder.
In a recent motion filed Nov. 25, defense attorneys asked the judge to ban prosecutors, and any witnesses they might call, from showing or referring to the contents of that notebook, and to show only the outside of the notebook.
“We ask that the Court prohibit the prosecutor from introducing the contents of the notebook or other writings into evidence at the hearing because doing so would make its contents public and would irreparably prejudice Mr. Mangione during his many upcoming trials,” the defense wrote.
The attorneys argued that bias is a major concern because any statement made during the hearings in state court could influence potential jurors who could later be called for the federal death penalty trial.
“Any statement, document, or accusation – true or not – is quickly disseminated through traditional media, social media, and law enforcement sources. If the contents of these writings become public, they are almost certain to reach potential jurors in this and the parallel federal prosecution, including future federal jurors who will ultimately decide whether to impose the death penalty,” the attorneys argued.
They went further, writing, “If the writings are publicly revealed at the hearing but ultimately suppressed, the damage cannot be undone. The prejudice would be insurmountable – at both the state and federal levels – where the stakes for Mr. Mangione could not be higher.”
The defense team is led by Karen Friedman Agnifilo and includes her husband Marc Agnifilo, who recently scored a major victory in the sex trafficking trial of disgraced music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs, where his client was acquitted of the most serious charges, which carried a possible life sentence. The third lawyer on the team is Jacob Kaplan.
The three attorneys further asked the judge to ban prosecutors and witnesses from characterizing the notebook as a “manifesto,” a word they described as “a prejudicial, fabricated law enforcement label.”
Starting Monday, the defense team is expected to argue two suppression hearings, a Mapp and a Huntley hearing. In 1961, the Supreme Court stated in its landmark ruling: Mapp vs. Ohio, that evidence gathered through an unconstitutional search and seizure cannot be used against a suspect in a state court.
Four years later, in 1965, the New York Court of Appeals ruled People versus Huntley that prosecutors must prove that a confession was given voluntarily before it can be used at trial. Defense attorneys claim the arresting McDonald’s officers failed to read Mr. Mangione his Miranda rights before asking him to identify himself.
When confronted by McDonald’s officers, Mr. Mangione allegedly provided a false ID, a New Jersey driver’s license in the name of Mark Rosario. The same permit, New York research had previously confirmed, was used by the suspected gunman to check into a youth hostel in Manhattan’s Bloomingdale neighborhood on November 30, four days before Thompson’s murder.
Referring to footage obtained from body-worn cameras, the defense showed that the arresting officers interrogated Mr. Mangione for nearly 20 minutes before reading him his Miranda warnings, asking him in response that he was not Mr. Rosario. Mr Mangione effectively admitted to providing a false ID before telling police his real birthday. Therefore, the defense concluded, these statements, including providing false identification, should be suppressed at trial.
It is unclear which witnesses the prosecution plans to call, and which statements from Mr. Mangione they plan to include. In Tuesday’s filing, attorneys noted that 10 statements “attributable to Mr. Mangione” had no “corresponding witness on the district attorney’s witness list.” The defense said it asked prosecutors if they still planned to make these statements at trial. “The prosecutor did not respond to counsel’s email,” the defense wrote, seeking clarification.
Defense attorneys also said they have charged two Altoona Police Department officers, Cpl. Garrett Trent and Patrolman Randy Miller, to the witness stand next week.
Because Mr. Mangione is being held in Brooklyn’s infamous Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal facility, he had to be allowed to appear in plain clothes at his state hearings by the judge overseeing his federal trial.
That judge, Margaret Garnett, granted Mr. Mangione’s request and allowed the following: two suits, three shirts, three sweaters, three pairs of pants, five pairs of socks and one pair of shoes (without laces). The amount of clothing suggests that the hearing may last several days.
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