Highlights of the evidentiary hearing by Luigi Mangione

Luigi Mangione is accused of shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a case that has drawn national attention. This week, he watched new testimony and never-before-seen footage from the day of his arrest at a McDonald’s restaurant.

Mr. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state charges related to the 2024 murder of Mr. Thompson, a father of two, as well as federal charges that could carry the death penalty.

The preliminary hearing focused on the defense’s attempt to exclude certain evidence from the trial, which has not yet been scheduled, including items found in his backpack during his arrest and statements he made to police.

In the first two weeks of the hearing, supporters of Mr. Mangione — a scion of a prominent Maryland family and an Ivy League graduate — packed the back rows of Manhattan Criminal Court, some wearing pins that painted him as a saint-like figure.

Prosecutors and Mr. Mangione’s legal team are expected to question more than a dozen witnesses from the date of his arrest, including the employee who discovered him and the police officer who arrested him.

Below are some of the key pieces of evidence discussed, which provide a window into Mr. Mangione’s trial.

The preliminary hearing focused on McDonald’s, a small town in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where police were shocked to discover the high-profile suspect days after Thompson was shot and just hours away from the crime scene in busy midtown Manhattan.

Witnesses said the arrest might never have happened there were it not for one of Mr. Mangione’s key features: his eyebrows.

On the first day of the hearing, prosecutors played a phone call a McDonald’s employee made to police reporting a report from a restaurant customer.

The employee said customers thought a customer looked like a suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. The customer was well covered wearing a black hoodie, surgical mask and tan beanie. But one key detail stands out.

“The only thing you could see was his eyebrows,” the employee told police.

It wasn’t the only time Mr. Mangione raised his eyebrows.

Prosecutors also entered evidence cards they said Mr. Mangione had in his possession that appeared to be a to-do list in the days after the high-profile shooting.

One card read: “Stay motivated, FBI slows down overnight” while another read: “Change hats, shoes, pluck eyebrows.”

Dozens of videos released by prosecutors show Mangione encountering police at a McDonald’s and eventually being arrested as other customers looked on.

Officers who responded this week recounted the video, telling the court what they thought when they realized the 27-year-old resembled the suspect in the photo.

Altoona Lt. William Hanelly said Thursday that when he heard a tip about the suspect, a co-worker sarcastically responded that he would “take action immediately.”

Mr. Hanely told the court he understood the irony because it seemed “ridiculous” to suggest that a “shooter from New York City found a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.”

But at the scene, officers said they quickly saw photos similar to those from the NYPD, which were disseminated to the public days later without any clues.

“It was him. I’m not kidding. He was really nervous. That was him,” an officer told Haneley in a phone call played in court.

In one video, Mr. Mangione is seen eating a McDonald’s meal as police stand guard around him in the restaurant, waiting for more officers to arrive.

During the hearing, Mr. Mangione watched the video quietly from the defense table, seated next to his attorneys, his wife and husband, Karen Friedman Agnifilo and Marc Agnifilo. The latter defended Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was acquitted on sex trafficking and racketeering charges months earlier.

Mr. Mangione, who wore a gray suit and button-down shirt most of the time, often took notes on a legal pad and occasionally smiled with his lawyers.

In a series of police body camera videos played in court, Mr. Mangione’s interactions with officers that eventually led to his arrest on December 9 were shown as McDonald’s music played in the background.

When police first spoke to Mr. Mangione, they asked him to remove his mask. He listened, then told police his name was “Mark Rosario” and provided them with a New Jersey ID that police later said was fake.

Hanely told the court that identification gave police enough reason to arrest Mangione, who in the video told police his real name was Luigi.

In another body camera video, an officer tells the 27-year-old he is under police investigation for providing a false identity, and as the officer arrests him, Mr. Mangione can be seen putting his hands on the wall.

They then took a photo of Mr Mangione’s hands behind his back, which was widely circulated on social media after his arrest.

The preliminary hearing also revealed what Mangione was carrying when he was arrested.

Mangione’s attorneys argued that a 9 mm handgun and a notebook should be excluded from the trial because police did not have a warrant to search his backpack. Prosecutors accused Mr. Mangione of writing about the “deadly, greedy Medicare cartel” in his notebooks.

At Thursday’s hearing, Mr Hanely argued there were exceptions to search warrants.

Earlier this week, Ms. Friedman Agnifilo confronted the officers who searched Mr. Mangione’s backpack, saying they searched the bag “because you thought he was a shooter in New York City.”

“No, we search everybody,” said Officer Christy Wasser.

Video played in court showed an officer removing a series of items from a backpack, including a pistol magazine which Mr Hanely said contained 9mm bullets – all while “Holly Jolly Christmas” played over a loudspeaker.

A law enforcement officer found a diary in the backpack and can be heard saying it read like a “manifesto.”

Ms Agnifilo objected after the “manifesto” portion of the video was played repeatedly in court, saying prosecutors wanted to emphasize the sentence.

Eventually, officers decided to stop searching the backpack and take it to the police station because “it was going to get messy,” Mr. Hanely testified.

Prosecutors this week pulled evidence images of other items Mangione had with him, including a gun, a silencer, dozens of $100 bills, masks, hair clippers and passports.

The hearing is expected to continue into next week.