If he’s a US citizen, he’s better off refusing to enter any PIN. That’s protected by the 5th amendment.
If not a citizen and this was in a port of entry context, then he would still have the 5th amendment protection. But customs can simply choose to refuse entry on discretion. So that’s a potentially serious consequence.
That’s more or less what happened with the littoral combat ships. It’s like the McDonald’s ice cream machine model of weapons system design.
The other wild things is that navies traditionally wildly overstaff their ships so they can do all their repairs themselves and fast. But when they switched to this contractor model they didn’t fully unload the staff, so they had a bunch of repair technicians on board who couldn’t do anything.
The court can’t declare a mistrial at this stage because a trial hasn’t started yet.
The court can’t dismiss the charges for a Miranda or 4th amendment violations, because dismissal is not the legal remedy for those violations.
The legal remedy is to suppress the tainted evidence. This can often lead to a posture where the charges are still pending, but the prosecution no longer has any good evidence to present.
We, the public, know a little bit more about the contents of the notebook than the article lets on. See this for example, about a different hearing. There are some entries I would describe as “pretty incriminating”, and it seems like the notebook would be an important source of motive and mens rea evidence for the prosecution.
And to underscore the seriousness of the backpack gun: it’s the same kind of gun that was reported as used at the scene. The prosecution hasn’t yet alleged that the backpack gun is the murder weapon, but it is a reasonable speculation that they will. And if they do allege that, it is also reasonable to speculate that they might introduce ballistic and tool mark evidence at trial to match the backpack gun to bullets from the victim’s body.
The prosecution has not yet revealed the existence of any other physical evidence. No prints or DNA, etc. So there is a possibility, in a hypothetical trial, that the backpack gun might be the only physical link between Mr. Mangione in Altoona, and Brian Thompson in Manhattan.
So it would be a big deal to the case if the backpack evidence is suppressed.
and why would he have given ID to the pigs?
I don’t know what the law is in Pennsylvania, but some states have a law that you must present ID on request if you have it. Nearly all jurisdictions require you to correctly state your name and address to police on request.
And the police here used a ruse that this was all just a McDonald’s loitering complaint. The cop admitted on the stand that the loitering thing was a lie. But that’s okay. Remember: the cops are allowed to lie to you, but you are not allowed to lie to the cops.
Remember also: stating the false name orally is a separate crime from the forged instrument.
So bottom line, the failure to Mirandize could suppress the statements where he confessed to the fake ID and to the fake name. But it’s not going to toss those charges. And it doesn’t suppress the action of handing over the ID, because that’s not a statement.
So there’s a pretty strong case for the ID charge even without the statements.
That’s actually a much bigger deal for Mangione at this hearing than the Miranda warning issue.
That seems like more of an uphill battle. Even if the search incident to arrest is illegal, the defense also has to prove that the feds would not have inevitably gotten the search warrant for the backpack anyway.
The sequence of events with the backpack was:
12 minutes into the McDonald’s interaction, the cops moved the backpack some distance away from him, and put themselves between Mangione and the backpack.
While still in the McDonald’s a local cop opened the backpack, searched all the inside compartments, and found the key items, including the gun. The cops say this was an inventory search incident to arrest.
She then put the gun back in the backpack and zipped it back up. This is a clue that the cops were actually worried about the legality of the search.
They took the whole backpack back to the police station.
The same cop then searched the backpack again at the police station, and magically found the same gun that she had put back into the backpack. Still no warrant.
7 hours later, Altoona PD applied for and received a warrant to search the backpack.
Despite the preposterousness of this sequence, if the prosecution can show that the team that applied for the warrant was not excessively tainted by prior knowledge of the gun or notebook, they can probably still use the evidence.
The key dispute is that the State thinks that Mangione wasn’t “detained” until after the ID check came back as fake. Mr. Mangione argues that he was “detained” from the very start of the interaction because the police positioned themselves to block his only route of exit.
In between those two times, Mangione made some statements that the defense would like to suppress, but nothing like a full confession or anything.
There may also be an issue that the first Miranda warning that the cop gave in the McDonald’s was only the first half of the warning. The right to remain silent part, but not the attorney part. I haven’t followed closely enough to know if the defense is arguing that or not.
We’ve also seen some of this:
Arrest target on low level misdemeanor.
Go to court, set bail.
Target posts bail.
ICE arrests target right outside the jailhouse gate.
…
Bond revoked for failure to appear.
sounds like he really did it but very well could get off on a technicality
This is a suppression motion for unlawful search and seizure. To call this man’s 4th amendment rights a “technicality” is some Law and Order copaganda bullshit.
These suppression motions are already very difficult to win. Mr. Mangione will have to show not only that his rights were violated, but also that the cops would not have found the evidence through a different, legal means. So if he does win, it will not be “on a technicality.” It’s just the system ensuring that everyone’s constitutional rights are respected.
I think GP is alleging that the feds used NSA spy shit to locate Mr. Mangione at the Pennsylvania McDonalds through his burner phone.
But… It is a violation of federal law to spy on an American like that. So the feds have not admitted to that. Instead, they manufactured an anonymous tip, based on legally obtained surveillance video from New York, in order to have a legal reasonable suspicion to question Mr. Mangione.
And then the local cops who responded fucked it up anyway by blocking his path of retreat, which is a functional arrest, and then not Mirandizing. And they also searched the backpack before they had any probable cause to do so, and after they had removed it safely away from Mr. Mangione. Without PC, the cops may search the backpack or Mangione for weapons only (the infamous stop and frisk), but they cannot search the backpack insides if they have removed it away from Mangione. The backpack is no longer a threat at that point
Oklahoma has a stricter anti-establishment clause (separating church and state) in its state constitution than the US constitution. This happened because OK wrote its constitution in the 1900s in the midwest.
Having said that the Bible plan was absolutely horrendous. They were going to buy Trump-branded Bibles for $50 a piece, which contained just the public-domain King James text, and the US constitution. Complete grift.
That makes this a friendly Kavanaugh stop.
It’s really just Alito, not the full court.
Each circuit is assigned to a justice who initially handles emergency motions from that circuit. Alito is assigned to the 5th circuit, which contains Texas. Jackson handled the recent SNAP funding case because she is assigned to the 1st circuit which contains Massachusetts.
So Alito’s stay will be redecided by the full court. He set the response deadline on Monday, so it could be any time after that. It could be real fast or it could be a month.
Speaking on the merits of this application, it seems kind of rich to me to say that the court challenge is too close to the election, but it’s not too close for the legislature to change the map like a month earlier.
I want to point out a detail here:
The line “is referred to the Court” means that this case was yanked out of Justice Jackson’s hands by at least 5 other votes.
If Jackson had turned the case over voluntarily, it would say “and by her referred to the Court” instead.
Do these experts also have license plates that say “TRAVELER?”. Is admiralty court involved? Does it involve crossing out the “penalty of perjury” line on the 1040 form?
There’s a federal rule that says that if you can prove that the prosecution is vindictive or selective, then the case is dismissed.
A prosecution is vindictive if it is only happening because of personal animus against the defendant. You have to prove that the animus caused the prosecution, in a legal “but for” sense.
A prosecution is selective if you’re getting singled out. That is, if other people in similar circumstances are not getting charged for the same behavior, but you are. For example, Attorney General James alleges that Ken Paxton is also a state Attorney General, and he also has multiple “second homes” with mortgages that he rents out and never visits, but somehow he has not been charged.
James is alleging both vindictive and selective prosecution, but she only has to prove either one or the other to get the case dismissed.
What the fuck is Justice Jackson doing ?
Here’s one analysis:
Jackson gets this application because it’s from the 1st circuit, and she is assigned to initially handle all shadow docket matters from the 1st circuit. By writing this admin stay, she potentially keeps the full court from stepping in and doing it for her. And this way she gets to set the 48 hour limit. This could cause the whole case to be decided one way or another a lot faster.
The supreme court let the trans passport case sit on the shadow “emergency” docket for 48 days. This stay gives the 1st circuit approx the weekend to make their decision, then the 48 hour deadline puts some oomph on the rest of scotus to make their decision.
If Justice Jackson did nothing, and 5 votes on the court intervened to issue a stay at 1 am, then there would be no 48 hour limit.
He is described as holding “tactical command” of the Chicago Midway Blitz operation.
Better pack a toothbrush.
This may be effective at preventing the government from accessing the data. But as we see, the law, including the 5th amendment, doesn’t protect from legal exposure to obstruction-type charges. Or lying to the cops type charges if you say you’ll unlock the phone, but then you actually wipe the phone.