Luigi Mangione's attorneys recently challenged several aspects of his arrest in court filings, alleging that his constitutional rights were violated.
Mangione faces state and federal charges related to the Dec. 4 assassination of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. The shooting occurred on a Manhattan sidewalk while Thompson was walking to a meeting with investors.
Mangione attorney Thomas Dickey alleges in a court filing that officers did not have a legal justification to approach and arrest Mangione, ABC News reported. Police arrested Mangione in a McDonald's in Pennsylvania after receiving calls that a man who looked like the suspect in photos published in the case was dining there.
Mangione faces firearm and fraudulent document charges in Pennsylvania and the court filing relates to those charges. However, the evidence police obtained in that arrest is relevant to the New York shooting of Thompson, including a document that has been described as a "manifesto" in media reports.
"Any reasonable person, innocent of any crime, would have thought that he was being restrained if he had been in the Defendant's shoes," Dickey wrote in the court filing, according to ABC News, adding that the actions violated Mangione's rights.
The court filing asserts that the "Altoona Police Department illegally seized a notebook" and that the characterization of the notebooks as a "manifesto" was done "for the purpose to prejudice [Mangione] and put him in a negative light before the public; all in an effort to prejudice any potential jury pool," ABC News reported.
