OAN Staff Lillian Mann
4:41 PM – Monday, May 18, 2026
The judge overseeing the trial of Luigi Mangione — the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — has ruled that jurors will be allowed to view a gun and an alleged manifesto during the trial, while other pieces of evidence will be excluded.
On Monday morning, the hearing centered on evidence found in the 28-year-old’s backpack following his arrest at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, including a notebook and a 9-millimeter handgun equipped with a silencer. The evidence will be viewed during both Mangione’s federal case and state murder trial.
Other evidence found in the bag such as a magazine of bullets and Mangione’s passport, wallet, cellphone and a computer chip will be suppressed, Judge Gregory Carro ruled.
Carro ruled that authority’s search of the backpack during the arrest was an “improper warrantless search,” since it was not on Mangione’s person during the pat down.
The gun and the notebook containing the alleged manifesto however, will be used as evidence since they were recovered at the police station when law enforcement continued searching the bag, Carro said.
A red notebook found in the defendant’s backpack — in which Mangione allegedly wrote that he wanted to “whack” a senior figure in the health insurance industry — will be introduced at trial. Notably, prosecutors have described the notebook as a ‘manifesto’ while defense attorneys have referred to it as a ‘journal.’
While not involved in the Mangione case, legal expert Richard Schoenstein, deemed the move a win for the prosecution.
Schoenstein also alleged that the situation was particularly complicated due to Mangione being patted down when he was not wearing the backpack.
“The gun and the writing that suggest a motive are pretty much the best evidence in the case,” he said.
“If you have a bag on you, generally that’s fair game too. But what makes it a little bit different here is that the bag was apparently sitting on the table. It wasn’t touching the person of Luigi Mangione. So there’s a question of whether those principles of search apply,” Schoenstein said.
Mangione’s lawyers argued that the defendant was unlawfully searched when he was arrested on December 9, 2024, and that law enforcement should have obtained a warrant prior to looking through the suspect’s backpack. The lawyers also noted that the bag was searched after Mangione gave officers a false identity.
During his last federal hearing on April 1st, Mangione’s federal interstate stalking trial was pushed from September 8, 2026, to an undetermined date in January 2027.
Later that day, the state trial was also pushed back from June 8th to September 8th.
Prosecutors alleged that the trials were delayed because of scheduling conflicts and the defense’s need for more time to prepare for two separate, complex cases simultaneously.
Critics, however, argued the delays stemmed from the defense team’s commitments to other high-profile clients, as lawyers Jacob Kaplan, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos confirmed in February that they would also represent Harvey Weinstein in his sexual assault retrial, which ended in a mistrial on Friday.
The top charge Mangione faces in New York is second-degree murder which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. He also faces six weapons related charges and one for reportedly possessing a fake ID.
Mangione faces both federal and state charges in connection with the December 2024 fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases. Mangione is being held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center alongside other high-profile inmates such as the ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.
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