Supreme Court 2025 Analysis & Luigi Mangione Wants Evidence Thrown Out

26:31David Super:So every time it takes a Second Amendment case, it has to choose between embarrassing its originalist ideals and philosophy and offending the gun lobby, and not taking cases is a way of avoiding putting itself to that kind of a decision. The simplest approach would be to reverse Bronin and Heller and go back to an originalist view of the Second Amendment, but apparently that's a bridge too far. Let's turn to a unanimous decision next, where the court sided with the FDA's rejection of applications for vaping products formulated to taste like fruit or candy and likely to be used by kids, as Justice Elena Kagan explained.

27:15Flavors, you give people blueberry vapes. The difficulty with that, and FDA, I think, has tried to document this, is that blueberry vapes are very appealing to 16-year-olds, not to 40-year-olds.

27:29David Super:We were talking about the gun industry earlier, and now we come to the tobacco industry there, equal in consumer abuse. And the tobacco industry is selling vaping products nominally to get existing smokers off of cigarettes, but in fact, to attract a whole new set of young people to endanger their health. And the FDA rejected marketing approval for a number of these items. And the tobacco companies said, well, the grounds cited in the denial don't quite match up with some of the things that the FDA said earlier. So that's a violation of administrative law. And the Supreme Court gave us a long-winded version of, oh, come on.

28:20David Super:And they said that it was very clear that the FDA had acted in just the way that it said before, that there's no reason the cigarette companies should have thought that it was going to come out any differently. In other cases, when the FDA provided a somewhat more thorough review, it came to the same result. And there's simply no reason to think that sending it back to the FDA would get any different result. And it cited the Administrative Procedure Act, which specifically tells courts not to interfere in cases where the result clearly was correct. David, does this case say anything more about the court affirming the FDA's authority or is it confined to its facts?

29:05David Super:This case is, I think, more interesting in general administrative law terms than it is in tobacco or FDA terms. There's been a controversy going back, at least to the Reagan administration, arguably earlier, about what agencies have to do when they change their positions. And we've got a lot of that going on right now because Trump appointees are pretty different than Biden appointees. And the court here said that agencies don't have to go through a lot of process when the change in their position is small and predictable. So if the Trump officials want to make minor changes around the edges as to what the Biden people were doing, that there won't be a need for something fairly elaborate.

29:55David Super:I am not aware of a lot of Trump administration officials that are making only minor changes, but I'm sure there's some out there somewhere. And so the court said that if the change is minor, you don't need an intricate procedure. And that will, I think, be useful guidance as agencies refine their policies of the future. Finally, Medina versus Planned Parenthood. It was about individual Medicaid patients' ability to sue. Is it having an effect? There's a provision in the Medicaid statute assuring patients, beneficiaries, of the right to choose their providers. Most of us care a lot about who our health care provider is, and this was understood in Medicaid, which was trying to provide health insurance as similar to other health insurance as they feasibly could.

30:45David Super:And the question is, when a state violates that, can beneficiaries sue? And the Supreme Court, in a number of cases over the years, has cut back on when you can sue when the law is violated. It's a strange concept for non-lawyers that someone has violated the law in a way that hurts you when you can't sue. But that's what the Supreme Court has said. And in this case, state are trying to throw Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid, presumably because they think exposure to Planned Parenthood will cause some people to think about abortions or about birth control. And the Supreme Court held that people denied choice of provider by these laws do not have the right to go to court.

31:37It's striking to me that in cases involving culture war issues, we almost always see the six to three ideological split with the court's conservative supermajority prevailing, of course.

31:52David Super:Well, I mean, almost all the cases you asked me about are cases with important social concerns. One of these days, we'll do a riveting podcast on securities law cases. So these are all significant cases. The unanimous ones, I think, are mostly ones where a lower court just got very lost and did something that was so unreasonable that either the liberal justices or the conservative justices were not willing to stand behind it. The one example that would seem to be an exception here is the Oklahoma case that we talked about, where there was a conservative justice who voted with the liberal justice to get to the 4-4 impasse.

32:33David Super:So it's not a completely ideological court. There were four conservatives that voted with the liberal justice on the ghost guns case, recognizing that the arguments there were quite foolish. But yes, the court is quite polarized on culture war cases and on executive power cases. So we don't have the kind of national mediating institution in the court that we did in earlier years when it all came down to Justice O 'Connor or Justice Kennedy. or back in the 1970s when you had two very liberal justices, two very conservative justices, and five legitimately up for grab swing justices. We don't have that kind of court anymore.

33:21No one can dispute that. Thanks so much, David, for helping us understand the implications of the decisions this year. That's Georgetown Law Professor David Super. Coming up next, Luigi Mangione is trying to get crucial prosecution evidence thrown out. I'm June Grosso, when you're listening to Bloomberg. Support for the show comes from Public. Public is an investing platform that offers access to stocks, options, bonds, and crypto. And they've also integrated AI with tools that can assist investors in building customized portfolios. One of these tools is called Generated Assets. It allows you to turn your ideas into investable indexes.

33:58So let's say you're interested in something specific like biotech companies with high R &D spend, small cap stocks with improving operating margins, or the S &P 500 minus high debt companies. Chances are there isn't an ETF that fits your exact criteria. But on public, you just type in a prompt and their AI screens thousands of stocks and builds a one-of-a-kind index. You can even backtest it against the S &P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Go to public.com slash market and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash market. And paid for by Public Holdings.

34:35Brokered services by Public Investing, member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, SEC Registered Advisor. Crypto services by ZeroHash. Sample prompts are for illustrative purposes only, not investment advice. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. Running a small business takes everything you've got. But with Chase for Business, you're not alone. They bring together local support and a broad range of resources to more than 7 million customers. With a deep understanding of your day-to-day needs, they provide products and guidance built to help you thrive.

35:07Right now, earn$500 when you open a new Chase Business Complete Checking account for new business checking customers with qualifying activities. Offer expires June 18, 2026. Chase Business Complete Checking has the flexible tools you need to accept payments, make deposits, and manage your finances with confidence. Learn more at chase.com slash podcast biz offer. Chase, make more of what's yours. These may apply to Chase Business Complete Checking Accounts. The$500 offer is available for new business checking accounts with qualifying activities through June 18th, 2026. Eligibility and qualification requirements must be met.

35:44Additional restrictions may apply. Please speak with a business banker for more information. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. So as a pizza genius, I know pizza shop orders come from, well, everywhere. With Genius by Global Payments, online orders actually sink straight into your kitchen. It's as simple as pie. And with digital menu boards, your specials, your prices, your brand, always front and center. It's one system, ready for game night crowds. Any night of the week, really. Big league reliability for any business. That's Genius. Whether you're planning a big tech event, launching a new campaign, or just stocking up on team gear, finding the right promotional products makes all the difference.

36:304imprint offers thousands of options, from on-trend apparel and premium drinkware to tech, totes, and giveaways, so you can find the right fit for any audience, purpose, or budget. You can customize it all, your logo, your message, your look, and many items come with no setup charge to help you save. And if you're really watching the bottom line, you'll find standout choices at every price point so you can make a real impact while staying on budget. Plus, you'll get expert help, fast turnaround times, and their 360-degree guarantee. So you can be 4imprint certain your order will arrive on time and look exactly right.

37:05Whatever your goal, 4imprint makes it easy to find your perfect promo match. Explore the possibilities today at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain.

37:34That was the 911 call that led police to the McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Luigi Mangione was eating breakfast last December. Mangione is trying to get a judge to exclude crucial evidence from an eventual trial on charges that he murdered United Health Group executive Brian Thompson last year in New York. At an evidentiary hearing that spanned seven days of testimony from 17 witnesses, prosecutors played body camera footage of his arrest at the McDonald's, McDonald's, starting with an officer approaching Mangione and asking for ID. How are you doing?

38:13David Super:Good. Can I ask Alex before? Yes, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Okay. Um, what's your name? Uh, Mark. What is it? Mark. Mark? Yes, sir. Mark what? Azaria. Azaria? Someone called. They thought you were suspicious. Oh, I'm sorry. Um, did you drive me on there? Yes, sir. Thanks. It ended with Mangione in handcuffs, but not before a police officer rifled through his backpack, finding a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear. Police searched the backpack more thoroughly at the police station and found evidence, including a 9mm handgun that prosecutors say matches the gun used to kill Thompson, a silencer, a passport, and a notebook they've described as a manifesto.

39:01But police didn't get a warrant until after both searches of the backpack. And the defense says that violates Mangione's constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure, and all that evidence should be thrown out. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to nine state counts, including second-degree murder and various weapons charges. He's also pleaded not guilty to four federal charges in a separate case. My guest is former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, a partner at McCarter & English. Bob, there are suppression hearings all the time in criminal cases, although probably not lasting as long with as many as 17 witnesses.

39:43That's true. And what you have when you're a defense lawyer heading into a criminal trial are really very few weapons to try to knock out the government's case before you go to trial. Once there is an indictment, you really have the opportunity only to try to suppress certain evidence. In other words, argue to the court that the evidence obtained by prosecutors and that prosecutors intend to rely on to gain a conviction at trial were somehow obtained illegally in violation of your client's constitutional rights and therefore should not be used at the trial. So what we're seeing here is something that defense lawyers try to do all the time.

40:22But as you say, this has turned into a much more protracted hearing going approximately three weeks. Still, at the end of the day, any suppression hearing in any criminal case is going to be an uphill battle for the defense because what the defense is really trying to do here is knock out critical evidence that could be used against their client and would have a very significant impact on the likely outcome of the trial. So judges are, generally speaking, reluctant to suppress key evidence before a trial. One interesting aspect of this lengthy suppression hearing is that even if the defense loses its motion to suppress this evidence, as it likely will, there's still a huge benefit for the defense because they've now heard testimony from a large number of police officers who will testify at the trial.

41:13And what it gives them is a preview of the state's case. And it also gives them a script by which they can cross-examine those witnesses later at trial. So even if they lose this case, there's still a benefit to the defense. And they can essentially lose the battle, but potentially win the war down the road by using the testimony at this suppression hearing against those witnesses at trial. Now, the defense is arguing that the police should have gotten a warrant before searching the backpack. Essentially, what the defense has argued with regard to the backpack is that the search was illegal and therefore all of the evidence obtained from that search, the key evidence in that backpack that is absolutely critical to the state being able to prove its case at trial, since it includes, among other things, the gun that the state alleged was used in the shooting.

42:04they argue that the search was illegal because it was not done pursuant to a warrant. And what the defense has said is that a warrant could have been obtained and in fact was not until much later. During the hearing, there was evidence played from the body cam footage of the police officers where you see officers debating among themselves whether they should get a warrant to search the backpack at the McDonald's or whether they should wait and bring the backpack back to the police station and then get the warrant. Ultimately, they decide not to get the warrant at the McDonald's to go back to the police station and to get the warrant only after the backpack has been searched back at the police station.

42:47Prosecutors argue the search was legal because it was an exception to the warrant requirement. And the police officers testified that they were looking in the backpack to see if there were any explosives or other dangerous items. But on cross-examination, the defense attorney asked the officer why she continued to search through the bag without a warrant, even after she determined that there were no explosives, and why police never cleared the restaurant of customers and employees if they thought there was an explosive. What the prosecution has argued here is that the search was legal because it was done pursuant to an exception, and that is called a search incident to arrest.

43:33So what prosecutors have said was at the time that the police officers approached Mr. Mangione at that McDonald's, they asked for his identification. He gave them a false identification, and he identified himself as Mark Rosario, giving him a false name. Police officers ran that information. They quickly learned that the identification was false, and the prosecution now argues that the search was done incident to the arrest, the crime being giving false information and a false ID to the Altoona police officers. And so they're saying that the search is legal because it's incident to arrest, although typically a search incident to arrest is done for purposes of securing the safety of the officers and of the surrounding people.

44:20And that's why the defense focused a lot on trying to demonstrate that the search of the backpack went beyond merely determining that there was nothing in there that could be a threat to the officers or a threat to anybody else in the McDonald's, that they went beyond what should have been permitted in a search incident to arrest to look for evidence rather than merely determining that there is nothing in the backpack that would pose this threat to the officers or to the public. So minutes after the police approached Mangione in the McDonald's, he told an officer that he didn't want to talk. That's according to video and testimony, but police continued asking him questions and he continued answering.

45:01And nearly 20 minutes passed before they read him the Miranda warnings. And so his lawyer is arguing that any of his statements should be excluded. So the body camera footage does show that an officer read Mr. Mangione's Miranda rights, but it wasn't until 20 minutes after they first started asking questions. And Mr. Mangione had said that he did not want to answer their questions. He did not ask for an attorney. Otherwise, officers would have had to have stopped asking those questions. But the question raised by the defense lawyers was, should he have been apprised of his Miranda rights sooner?

45:38Miranda rights are the all-important advisement of a defendant's right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney before any questioning continues. And the defense has argued that not only the comments made by Mr. Mangione on December 9th at the McDonald's should be suppressed, but also his comments through his extradition to New York 10 days later should also be set aside. Bob, what will the judge consider as far as the delay in giving the Miranda warnings. In terms of analyzing whether Mr. Mangione should have been given his Miranda rights sooner than 20 minutes after police officers first started questioning him, the judge is going to look at the critical question of whether or not he was in custody and whether he was actually being interrogated by law enforcement.

46:27That's the standard. When an individual is considered in custody and being interrogated by law enforcement, That is the moment that triggers the requirement that they be given the Miranda warnings. So the question here is when they were standing in that McDonald's, can the defense convince the court that Mr. Mangione was in custody and in fact was being interrogated by police officers at the time? The prosecution has argued that he was not in custody, that he was not prevented from leaving the McDonald's, and that he was not formally being interrogated until about 20 minutes into the questioning.

47:04And that is the point at which he was given his Miranda rights. And Mangione's defense attorney argued that he was effectively in custody because officers had formed a human wall around him at the McDonald's. You mentioned before that it's not likely that the judge will kick out this evidence. Will you explain in a little more detail why you feel that way? The issues that were raised during the suppression hearing are enormous from the standpoint of the prosecution. What's at stake here is the evidence that really goes to the heart of the prosecutor's case. Were the judges to decide to suppress the search, that would bar prosecutors from using the 9mm handgun allegedly found in the backpack that matches the firearm used in the killing.

47:53It would bar prosecutors from presenting at trial writings in the notebook that, according to prosecutors, laid out Mangione's disdain for health insurers and ideas about killing a CEO at an investor conference. And it would also bar them from using evidence that ties the false name that he gave to police officers at the McDonald's with the name that was used by an individual checking into the New York hostel days before the shooting. So the stakes are enormously high, and generally speaking, judges will give the benefit of the doubt to police officers and to law enforcement if there's a credibility question between the defendant and law enforcement.

48:38I think what will be critical to the analysis here regarding the search is that there was a crime committed by giving the false information. And the question then is raised as to whether the search incident to that arrest was appropriate or not. In this day and age where most people can probably recite the Miranda warnings from watching them on TV or in the movies, why do police hesitate to give them? Police officers argued that they were trying to keep him calm and trying to determine if, in fact, he was the person who law enforcement was looking for while they questioned him. It's still a big deal, even though, as you say, people can recite those warnings from watching Law & Order and many of the other television shows.

49:24That is something that still has to be given at the appropriate time. And the failure to do that can result in statements being suppressed and not being presented at trial. So it's a very big deal here. And the judge is going to have to look at the question of whether or not he was actually in custody. He was surrounded by police officers, but the prosecution will argue that at no time did he ask whether he could leave. Did he make an attempt to leave or did prosecutors tell him that he couldn't leave the McDonald's? And therefore, he was not in custody at the time that they asked him these questions and was not being interrogated at the time that they asked him these questions.

50:03And therefore, the decision to not Mirandize him for 20 minutes was appropriate and should not result in a suppression of those statements. And we'll have to wait until May 18th to find out the judge's ruling. Thanks so much, Bob. That's Robert Mintz of McCarter & English.

50:49This dog salon? Operational excellence. Thanks to Genius from Global Payments. Scheduling? Personalized. Checkouts? Instant. Absolutely genius. Big League reliability for any business. That's genius. When you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track. For midsize and large companies, risk can affect multiple parts of the organization at once, from property and liability to cyber and regulatory challenges. At that level, managing risk becomes an ongoing discipline. At the Hartford, the focus is on helping businesses manage risk before it turns into something more disruptive.

51:27And when losses do happen, that work is paired with insurance coverage shaped by years of underwriting, risk engineering, and claims experience. Learn more at thehartford.com slash risk mitigation. Policies provided by Hartford Fire Insurance Company and its property and casualty affiliates, Hartford, Connecticut.

51:44David Super:If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end close, it's time to get Brex AF, a Gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. As industries evolve faster than ever, companies need an environment that accelerates strategic growth, and Michigan delivers on that promise. From emerging startups to global enterprises, Michigan offers what executives value most, a resilient, innovative ecosystem, diverse communities that attract top talent, and a quality of life that supports work-life balance. With our unified Team Michigan approach, businesses scale faster and compete at the highest level.

52:25Michigan, pure opportunity. Seize your opportunity at michiganbusiness.org.