Pennsylvania's lawyer, Luigi Mangion, continues to argue that Altoona police have illegally detained the murder suspect and searched for his belongings.
Mangion, 26, is charged with first-degree murder in both New York and Pennsylvania, promoting terrorist acts, stalkers, and other state and federal charges, allegedly fired two married fathers, Brian Thompson, on a sidewalk in Manhattan in December 2024.
Now, his lawyers say the authorities' use of the term “manifesto” is “wrong” to describe Mangion's work, which he allegedly found in a backpack during his December 9 arrest.
“The use of this characterization of the defendant's personal experience and doubts of writing is incorrect, inappropriate, unjustified and has no evidentiary value,” Altoona-based defense attorney Thomas Dickey said in a court application Tuesday. “The defendant believes this characterization was made solely to bias the defendant and put him in a negative view in front of the public in an effort to bias the defendant and harm the potential pool of ju-secrets.”
Mangion allegedly shot Thompson outside the Manhattan Hotel, where United Healthcare's annual shareholders meeting was being held, in a law that believes it intends to send a message to the health insurance industry based on a manifesto discovered by a suspect arrested a few days after Thompson's murder.
In his writings, Mangion clearly revealed that he named the healthcare industry, particularly United Healthcare and the shareholders' meeting that Thompson was heading towards New York during the assassination.
Dicky asks the court not to describe Mangion's alleged writing as a “manifesto.”
He also asks the court to suppress various other evidence, including an unguaranteed search of the suspect's backpack, a statement to police during his arrest, and DNA evidence.
Mangion's lawyers alleged that Mangion was improperly detained and arrested at McDonald's, so the specific evidence collected during that arrest should not be presented as evidence against his client.
The 26-year-old suspect earned his degree from Ivy League University in Pennsylvania and attended an elite private high school in Baltimore.
Despite some supporters characterised him as an anti-capitalist crusade, he was said to have stopped at Starbucks in New York City just minutes before the murder and was eventually arrested while eating hash browns at McDonald's.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Mangion has been accused of planning the murder with the motive to spark a “public debate about the healthcare industry.”
New York prosecutors said Mangion planned a trip to New York. Find a Minnesota Thompson in town for United Healthcare's annual shareholder meeting. And kill him.
Mangion is said to have shot Thompson from behind with a 3D printed ghost gun and suppressor.
The NYPD released stills from surveillance video showing him pulling down his face mask and laughing while flirting with the clerk at the check-in at a Manhattan hostel where police say they stayed for the murder. It went viral and quickly attracted a wave of support online for the defendant murderer.
The suspect escaped from the scene of Thompson's murder, riding a bike to a bus stop, then on a bus to Altoona, where he was eventually identified and arrested.
Mangion was originally from Maryland and recently lived in California and Hawaii.
He graduated as a Valle Dictarian in 2016 at Gilman School, a private all-boy high school in Baltimore.
Mangion received his bachelor's and master's degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020.
