Judge eyes short hearing on Mangione backpack seizure

US District Judge Margaret Garnett said the hearing in the death penalty case will be limited to just one witness: an officer from the police department in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Mangione was arrested in December 2024.

The officer, she said, must have "sufficient authority and experience to testify about the established or standardised procedures in use" at the time of Mangione's arrest "for securing, safeguarding and, if applicable, inventorying the personal property of a person arrested in a public place".

She ordered prosecutors to confer with Mangione's lawyers on a suitable hearing date, putting him back in court sooner than a scheduled January 30 conference.

Because the hearing will focus on procedures, the officer being called as a witness "need not have had any personal involvement" in Mangione's arrest, Garnett said.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to federal and state murder charges, which carry the possibility of life in prison.

Mangione's lawyers want Garnett to bar prosecutors from using certain items found in the backpack, including a gun police said matched the one used to kill Thompson and a notebook in which Mangione purportedly described his intent to "wack" a health insurance executive.

Echoing their arguments at a recent state court hearing, they contend the search was illegal because police had not yet obtained a warrant.

Officers began searching the backpack at the McDonald's restaurant where Mangione was arrested while eating breakfast on December 9, 2024, five days after Thompson was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group's annual investor conference.

Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind.

Altoona is about 370km west of Manhattan.

Prosecutors say officers searched the bag legally because Altoona police protocols require promptly searching a suspect's property at the time of arrest for dangerous items and police later obtained a warrant.

Among the items found at the McDonald's, according to officer testimony at a recent court hearing, was a loaded gun magazine.

Officers continued searching the bag at a police station and found the gun and silencer.

They performed what is known as an inventory search and found the notebook and other notes, including what appeared to be to-do lists and possible getaway plans, according to testimony.

That search, which involves cataloguing every piece of a suspect's seized property, is also required under Altoona police policy, prosecutors said.

Laws concerning how police obtain search warrants are complex and often disputed in criminal cases.

As part of her inquiry, Garnett ordered federal prosecutors to provide her with a copy of the affidavit submitted to obtain a federal search warrant in the matter.

Mangione's lawyers contend that searching the backpack before getting a warrant may have influenced how the affidavit was written but prosecutors say no specific details about items, such as the notebook writings, were mentioned in the document.

Australian Associated Press