Moments after Luigi Mangione was handcuffed at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.

The discovery, recounted in court Monday as Mangione fights to keep evidence out of his New York murder case, convinced police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that he was the man wanted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan five days earlier.

  • Manjushri@piefed.social
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    18 hours ago

    Not only did they search the bag without a warrant…

    Wasser resumed her search after an 11-minute drive to the police station and almost immediately found the gun and silencer — the latter discovery prompting her to laugh and exclaim “nice,” according to body-worn camera footage. Wasser said the gun was in a side pocket that she hadn’t searched at McDonald’s.

    She had the bag in her car for over ten minutes, with not witnesses or video, and then after resuming the incomplete search almost immediately found the gun and silencer. My read is that there is every possibility that the gun and silencer could have been placed in the bag during that transport.

    An officer concerned about a bomb accidentally being brought to the police station (again) would hardly forget to look in the bag’s side pockets. Nor is it reasonable to suggest that they could overlook a gun and silencer in the initial search of the bag.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      6 hours ago

      “nice” is what you exclaim after discovering what your colleague meant by “I put a little something special in there just for you.” with a wink.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Yeah, I thought it was known long ago that the chain of possession (or whatever the term is) for the backpack is fucked. Idk why this isn’t being used straight away to throw away all evidence.

      • fodor@lemmy.zip
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        4 hours ago

        It is being used. The defense is moving to suppress evidence (his backpack and anything he said before he was locked up), and that’s what these days in court are all about.

        The state is trying to tell a complicated story. They claim that he (a) wasn’t detained, (b) voluntarily gave them a fake ID because … nobody knows why, © he didn’t feel like he was being detained, and therefore (d) they arrested him for the fake ID, after which (e) they read him Miranda, and after that (f) they searched his bag as part of arresting him.

        That lets them maximize the evidence against him. The problem for the prosecution is that probably the above is actually factually incorrect. It’s the judge’s job to determine exactly where the prosecution and cops are making shit up, which is why the hearings are happening right now. Later the judge will rule on what actually happened, and therefore what evidence can be admitted against him.

        The proceedings right now are before the trial. No jury is watching this.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      I remember OJ Simpson getting off a double-murder because there was a remote possibility that someone (actually several hundred people) orchestrated a conspiracy to plant evidence.

      He stabbed two people to death and there was DNA evidence tying him to the crime scene.

      • ChokingHazard@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        Not remote, they did. Police corruption let him off. If they let the evidence do its job there was enough to convict.

          • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            You seem to be confusing Martin Luther King with Rodney King. No need for you to do legwork.

          • ameancow@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            OJ got off because the jury wanted retribution for the Martin Luther King trail.

            He got off because the jury was subjected to an absolute media circus and was tampered with repeatedly and the lawyers for OJ did everything they could to confuse them about the relatively new technology of DNA analysis, and judge Ito had almost no control over the courtroom, leading to one of the first “memes” of “I’ll allow it.”

            You don’t have to do legwork, I remember much of it.

            Edit: it took me a moment to realize you said Martin Luther King… I don’t even… man, bruh, just… bruh.

          • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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            11 hours ago

            Martin Luther King Jr doesn’t have any famous trial losses to his name, are you thinking of Rodney King, who was also in LA and whose trial was contemporary?

            • ameancow@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              There are users in here who are utterly confused, look at the other replies. I know the 90’s were now over 3 decades ago but it’s all completely searchable. There are multiple documentaries. I don’t know how people confuse Rodney King, Martin Luther King and the OJ Simpson case all in one thread. Astonishing.

              • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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                43 minutes ago

                seems only one person got confused, the one that got banned. judging by his username, he was definitely looking for trouble.

              • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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                9 hours ago

                it has an uncomfortable “i can’t tell the difference between Black people” vibe. i don’t mind people not remembering the 90s. i do mind people not double checking the broad details real quick

                • ameancow@lemmy.world
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                  9 hours ago

                  It’s mind blowing particularly to an Oldy McOldface like myself who was there and lived through the events.

                  • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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                    8 hours ago

                    same here. i was just little when the police brutalized Rodney King. but i still remember my white neighbors being incensed about how while that was wrong, the LA riots were completely unjustified. meanwhile my Black neighbors all tried to explain that a riot is not the result of a single event and that the LA riots were the response to decades and even centuries of mistreatment

      • ChokingHazard@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        You’re thinking of Rodney King. Completely different. Mark Fuhrman committed perjury and tampered with evidence.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          Rodney King was the case of a driver who got assaulted by police and brutally beat, it led to rioting across LA because it was captured on video, and King’s iconic “Can’t we all get along” speech on TV. It was the same general time and place, but not directly connected to the OJ case.

          Mark Fuhrman may or may not have been some racist tampering with evidence but it still would have taken enormous resources and a risky gamble to frame OJ for… reasons. OJ was not framed, he got off because they turned the trial into a media circus and the jury didn’t understand DNA evidence which was very new and few people had heard of it as an investigation tool. They have tried to leverage Rodney King’s beating but that was only one part of the massive fuck-up by prosecution and the legal system.

          My memory of events is still pretty fresh but you’re welcome to look it all up.

            • ameancow@lemmy.world
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              5 hours ago

              I would have to look it up, I didn’t watch documentaries, I watched it all on live TV at the time. I’m sure there’s boatloads of stories and documentaries on youtube, just beware anything that tries to paint the case as anything other than a massive clusterfuck and failure of the system to safeguard judicial system from money, fame, influence and media hype. What went wrong, was it was the first huge celebrity trial covered on live TV, and all the same nonsense and political bullshit you would expect to happen today, happened then.

              The DNA evidence was biggest the key which would have clinched any similar case today, but it was still a very new thing, and people were as dumb about science then as they are now, so that ignorance was leveraged by a rich man’s legal team and whatever political funding they were getting.

              Time is a flat circle.

              There was more than DNA evidence, there was a fat ton of circumstantial evidence, testimonies from associated people, and of course things like Nicole Brown Simpson having previously called 911 as OJ was beating her up and threatening her life, the whole massive performance piece of the slow-speed bronco chase, it was just a fuckup from the start and everyone involved just wanted to get famous from it.

    • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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      15 hours ago

      This. They’re trying to manufacture probable cause after an illegal search.