VINDICATION! This is exactly what I understood KFA to be indicating about Luigi’s bag.

I absolutely did hear “car,” and my analysis of the ensuing arguments indicating a concern over police tampering with the bag were SPOT ON

Just a quick post to follow up regarding what I heard KFA say in court about Luigi’s bag and the word “car.” If you haven’t already read my full article on the experience from the courthouse and within the hearing, it’s here.

When it got to this point in the hearing, it was all about what evidence had not yet been turned over to the defense, so that is the context in which the statements and arguments were made. As I remember it (and as I confirmed when I re-listened to my voice note to myself that I took as soon as we were let out of the hearing), KFA said the following “We still don’t have the search warrants or affidavits for the bag, we still don’t even know where the bag was…”

This led to an interjection by the Prosecution (Kaplan) that they were “still redacting” and had “turned over bodycam from the Altoona police.” This was when I heard the word “car,” when KFA responded to this claim from Kaplan, she said something along the lines of (I’m not claiming I’m getting it exactly verbatim) “when they came in from the car, they had the bag.” She also stated at the same time that the prosecution had only turned over one of the twelve officers’ bodycam footage. KFA wanted it on the record that it was not accurate for Kaplan to claim they’d turned it over, when there was still 11 bodycams (her claim) of the relevant angles being held from them, along with not yet being provided the search warrants or affidavits for the bag.

KFA was clearly implying (to use a word that some people don’t seem to understand) that there was some kind of question as to the bag (like where it was when it was searched), and laying the groundwork that she suspects it was improperly searched/seized outside of the McDonalds and not within Luigi’s presence.

Many readers hyper-fixated on the word “car,” and believed that I must have been mistaken. I never said there was a car referred to as “Mangione’s rental car” or anything like that, I just said that KFA said “when they came inside from the car, they had the bag” (that was the gist of her statement, I didn’t have a recording device, and could not possibly remember every word verbatim). The ensuing conversation about illegal search and seizure is what made my lawyer senses go up, and tell me that there was an issue with the bag and where it was searched, meaning at least the defense team believed it was searched or seized outside of Luigi’s presence.

Now, it is being reported by multiple outlets that Luigi’s PA attorney (Tom Dickey) has filed a motion to suppress unlawfully obtained evidence during the McDonald’s arrest, claiming that Luigi was blocked from exit by approximately 10 police officers, then his backpack was seized and brought out of his sight, where it was searched in another location before he was officially arrested and without his Miranda rights being read to him.

I’m still working on pulling the motion myself to post it here, but please understand that I am not a journalist for a living. I’m a practicing attorney that has other obligations, and cannot always fully devote my attention to pulling every document filed in the three concurrent prosecutions in this case. It actually takes a lot of time and effort within each state’s court system to pull documents, and this case has special precautions around it as a high-profile case that sometimes make it more difficult.

If anyone reading has already located or pulled the motion (I believe Dickey’s motion to suppress this evidence was filed two days ago, 2/25), please send it to me and save me some time! Otherwise, will do my best to locate it and post it here by this weekend.

In the meantime, here is an MSM article from MSN citing the 23-page filing by Dickey, which does not contain a link to the filing itself and actually has a message within the article that says “sorry, we couldn’t load this embedded content.” It’s possible the filing was only immediately available to journalists/press or anyone local who could do an in-person records search at the Blair County courthouse, but I will continue my search to locate the PDF of the filing itself later tonight or tomorrow.

MSN Article Citing Dickey’s 23-page motion to suppress

Reading the summary of the claims made in the filing from the available articles, this is exactly what it sounded to me like KFA was implying —that there was some sort of chain of custody issue with the bag and where it was searched. It did sound to me initially like she was saying it had been illegally searched in a car outside of the McDonald’s, which led to my own speculation about “what car?” I revised my original account to remove the word vehicle, as that was my own speculation regarding where the bag could have been brought in from and what KFA meant when she said “car.”

It seems clear now that KFA was saying that from the evidence they’ve seen so far, Luigi’s defense team at least believes that the bag was taken and searched somewhere that they can’t establish chain of custody for—perhaps it was taken outside to a police car, or some other location within police control and away from where Luigi was detained.

According to the articles that are citing the 23-page motion, Dickey alleges officers “repacked” the bag, which is precisely what I was taking from the interaction between KFA and Kaplan surrounding the bag and the idea that it was taken somewhere else, then brought back inside the McDonalds or to the police station at a later time.

Here are some social media screenshots from Luigi accounts that picked the story up so that I have an image for this post:

I just love a great vindication, so I had to take a moment and share this. Don’t lose the forest for the trees here—the key point and takeaway from the discussion I overheard between KFA and Kaplan is that KFA was indeed indicating they believed the bag was searched in another location, which if true, opens the possibility to evidence tampering. Whether Luigi’s defense team believe it was a police car or another location, remains to be determined!

Remember that the prosecution was given two more weeks (from the hearing date of 2/21, which would be March 7th) to turn over additional evidence, which KFA was adamant needed to include the rest of the Altoona police officer’s’ bodycam footage and the search warrant & affidavits for the bag allegedly found on LM at the McDonald’s. We shall see what they turn over at that date, and whether KFA files additional Motions to Compel or motions for extensions/continuance of the currently calendared June 26th motion hearing.

Alright, I have to get back to some other legal work, as well as my upcoming post on the silence of Luigi’s family, so stay tuned and subscribe!