Even if the court rules against the government in Luigi Mangione’s bid to block the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office from showing or describing items seized during his arrest for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Newsmax Monday that overwhelming evidence of his crime will still remain.
Napolitano told Newsmax's "Newsline" that the defense lawyers have filed an omnibus motion "to suppress the evidence that the police obtained from him at the scene of his arrest."
The hearing at the Manhattan Supreme Court over the disputed evidence in the state case, which began Monday, is expected to last several days.
Napolitano gave numerous examples of evidence defense lawyers hope will be thrown out, including "they don't want the gun to be able to be shown to the jury because the backpack was searched without a search warrant and before he was arrested.
"They don't want his words to be used because police engaged him in conversation ... before they gave him his Miranda warnings."
But Napolitano emphasized that even "if the government fails to demonstrate to a judge that all of this evidence was obtained constitutionally, they have the murder on tape; they have a video of Mangione shooting this guy in the back.
"So the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming."
However, he stressed the importance of the hearing, saying that defense lawyers "are required by the rules of legal ethics to wear away at the government's case and reduce it as best they can so as to reduce their client's exposure to life in prison."
He also pointed out that the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence was obtained legally.
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Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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