A federal judge said Monday she will hold a short hearing in the next two weeks on procedures that police said allowed them to seize and look through Luigi Mangione’s backpack when he was arrested in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett said the hearing in the death penalty case will be limited to testimony from one witness: an officer from the Altoona, Pennsylvania, police department, where Mangione was arrested in December 2024.
Garnett said the officer must have “sufficient authority and experience to testify about the established or standardized procedures in use” at the time of Mangione’s arrest for securing, safeguarding, and, if applicable, inventorying a person’s personal property after arrest in a public place. She also said the officer being called need not have had any personal involvement in Mangione’s arrest because the hearing will focus on procedures.
Garnett ordered prosecutors to confer with Mangione’s lawyers on a hearing date, placing Mangione back in court sooner than a scheduled Jan. 30 conference. She ordered prosecutors to provide the judge with a copy of the affidavit submitted to obtain a federal search warrant in the matter.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to federal and state murder charges that carry the possibility of life in prison. His lawyers want Garnett to bar prosecutors from using certain items found in the backpack, including a gun police said matched the weapon used to kill Thompson and a notebook in which Mangione purportedly described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive.
Mangione’s attorneys have argued the search was illegal because police had not yet obtained a warrant. They previously made similar arguments at a recent state court hearing.
According to the reporting, officers began searching the backpack at the McDonald’s restaurant where Mangione was arrested while eating breakfast on Dec. 9, 2024—five days after Thompson was killed. The account said surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Altoona is about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.
Prosecutors said 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. The reporting said officer testimony at a recent court hearing described finding a loaded gun magazine among the items at McDonald’s.
Prosecutors said officers continued searching the backpack at a police station and found the gun and silencer. They said the department performed an inventory search—cataloging every piece of the seized property—and during that inventory found the notebook and other notes, including what appeared to be to-do lists and possible getaway plans.
Garnett’s order came as laws governing how police obtain search warrants are often disputed in criminal cases. As part of her inquiry, she said she would review the affidavit submitted for a federal search warrant; Mangione’s lawyers contended that searching the backpack before obtaining the warrant may have influenced how the affidavit was written. Prosecutors said no specific details about items, including the notebook writings, were mentioned in the affidavit.