“Even if this motion is successful, it doesn’t mean that Luigi Mangione walks out of prison,” said Ron Kuby, a criminal defense attorney whose practice focuses on civil rights. “All it means is that the items that were seized from him, or seized that belong to him, can’t be used as evidence against him.”

Kuby thinks that Mangione’s team has made enough claims in their papers to merit a hearing on the issues, in which the police officer involved would have to testify, confirming or denying the facts. “It does appear that they stopped and frisked Mangione without a legal basis to do it. If that’s true, everything that follows from there is likely to be found to be unconstitutional,” he said.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      The cops planted the evidence on the first convenient person they found.

      Hardly call his arrest a convenience. They had to chase him halfway across Pennsylvania.

      I’m open to the possibility he was set up. But only in the Lee Harvey Oswald sense (someone mired in radicalism who was tangentially involved). You’re going to have to produce a “second gunman” before I toss the abundance of evidence against him as a fabrication.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        I’m not particularly remarkable in my looks, and I have so many doppelgangers that people are CONSTANTLY walking up to me claiming that my name is literally anything other than what my name is. I don’t believe this is at all a unique feature of my particular genetics, I just happen to have a face that is known as a “familiar face,” within both the art and acting sphere, as well as the psychological and sociological spheres of influence.

        I’m saying that this concept absolutely applies to Luigi Mangione. He just looks too distinct, and quite frankly too chiseled to match the fuzzy photos of the actual killer. This being an extremely high profile case, in which the investigators involved felt pressure to wrap the case up as quickly as possible most likely led to them grabbing the wrong person, and planting evidence that the real killer abandoned on Luigi.

        Pennsylvania isn’t particularly big, and it’s literally next door to NYC. You can either go directly from PA to NY and drive into the city from the north, or go through New Jersey. It takes longer to go north, but I think it is a better drive, TBH.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          He just looks too distinct, and quite frankly too chiseled to match the fuzzy photos of the actual killer.

          Sure, because his mug shot isn’t a fuzzy pixelated photo.

          the investigators involved felt pressure to wrap the case up as quickly as possible most likely led to them grabbing the wrong person

          If they have the wrong person, it should be fairly simple for Luigi to produce an alibi to explain that he wasn’t in Lower Manhattan at the time of the murder.

          Pennsylvania isn’t particularly big, and it’s literally next door to NYC.

          It’s enormous. 44k mi^2. And he was halfway across it when he was arrested. Again, if he’s innocent, and they just grabbed a random guy out of a random diner in flyover territory, and the guy has a long, established online presence and a penchant for selfies, it shouldn’t be hard at all to say “My cell phone tracking data proves I wasn’t anywhere near Brian Thompson at the time of his death.”

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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      20 days ago

      There’s also the issue of whether their witness is cooperative or not. There’s always an outside chance that the arresting officer intentionally behaved in a manner that invalidates the evidence, and is willing to testify in a way to support that.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Wow, that sketch makes the youthful and confident looking Luigi look more like a mob underling from a GTA game. Yikes

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Guy is going to jail, the grave, or both. Guilty or not the state is not letting a little thing like police evidence tampering or innocence get in the way of him paying for the consequences being brought home to that CEO. Truth was publicly spoken to power, and someone has to pay for that in the states eyes.

  • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Merit a hearing = 0 chance, but it shows the public and DA that this is going to be a fight, and to appeals.

    It concerns me that we haven’t had more of this, he should be running a ferociously aggressive defense, the only reasons he wouldn’t are:

    1. Very confident that he can’t be convicted as a matter of law. I suspect convicting him by jury would be hard, but definitely possible. The federal charges are more concerning, the US As have more influence over juries often.

    2. They know this is bad and are waiting to knock out a few key pieces of evidence in a long-shot hail-Mary because it’s their only chance, and otherwise they want room to make a deal.

    I hope it’s not the latter.

    Personally I suspect they’re confident in a hung jury on the state charges but know they’re going down hard on the federal ones, and are trying to spin it as federal overreach, which won’t work but it’s an argument.

    10 years from.now if the pendulum swings back he can appeal and get out that way.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      That’s a correct word. In fact, it’s more correct than “supressor.” The first supressor was literally called the Maxim Silencer, and the ATF uses the term “silencer.”

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    I feel like they had more than enough reasonable suspicion, and that the evidence they found on his person are also very much relevant to the case so it should be presented to the Jury to help them make their decision.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        Match the physical profile, matched the outfit, matched the face, probably smelled like he hadn’t showered in 2 days, just got off a bus from New York carrying a backpack full of cash.

        • dnick@sh.itjust.works
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          18 days ago

          They knew he got off a bus from New York and that his backpack was full of cash? By the fact that he was sitting in a mcdonalds?

          And he didn’t match the outfit, just similar. You think the cops from around the us were justified in searching anyone white in a hoodie because someone in New York did something?

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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            18 days ago

            Whoever called the tip in probably knew he was between buses, yes. The exact contents of his backpack would be unknown so long as he didn’t retrieve any cash from it during his stop.

            • dnick@sh.itjust.works
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              16 days ago

              Probably? Based on what? McDonalds around you often note which bus you get off of, do they?

              • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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                16 days ago

                It was a mall adjacent a major bus route, Luigi was on foot after getting off the bus alongside a bunch of other people doing the same.

                • dnick@sh.itjust.works
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                  16 days ago

                  Are you guessing at this, or are you claiming that is what was actually reported?

                  My understanding is that it was an employee at the restaurant that reported him. ‘Mall adjacent to a bus stop’ seems a little less ‘first hand account that he was on a bus from New York’ and more circumstancial like ‘he came in at the same time as some others, had a different color hoodie and different color backpack than the description, but very broadly matched “white guy with hoodie”’.

                  Basically exactly what should get an improper arrest thrown out if you detain someone without cause, fail to Mirandize, search them and then find something incriminating.