NEW YORK (AP) — Luigi Mangione returns to court on Tuesday for the second session of a hearing where he seeks to prevent New York prosecutors from utilizing evidence allegedly linking him to the 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The pretrial proceedings in Mangione’s murder case commenced on Monday with prosecutors unveiling surveillance footage from the incident on December 4, 2024, along with security videos capturing his arrest at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania five days later.

As the prosecutors played a 911 call from a McDonald’s manager, reporting customers’ suspicions that Mangione resembled the suspect in Thompson’s murder, the 27-year-old clutched a pen tightly, occasionally forming a fist.

Mangione’s defense team is urging Judge Gregory Carro to prohibit the prosecution from presenting or discussing items retrieved from his backpack during his arrest. These include a 9 mm handgun, which prosecutors argue matches the weapon used in the murder, and a notebook allegedly containing Mangione’s plans to target a health insurance executive.

The defense contends the items should be excluded because police didn’t have a warrant to search his backpack. They also want to suppress some statements Mangione made to law enforcement personnel, such as allegedly giving a false name, because officers started asking questions before telling him he had a right to remain silent.

Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. The state charges carry the possibility of life in prison, while federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Neither trial has been scheduled. The next hearing in the federal case is scheduled for Jan. 9.

Mangione’s lawyers want to bar evidence from both cases, but this week’s hearing pertains only to the state case.

Five witnesses testified on Monday, including a Pennsylvania prison officer who said Mangione told him that at the time of his arrest he had a backpack with foreign currency and a 3D-printed pistol.

Another prison officer said his superintendent told him Mangione was being held under constant watch because the facility “did not want an Epstein-style situation,” referring to Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 jail suicide.

More law enforcement officers are expected to take the witness stand on Tuesday.

Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind as the executive walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for his company’s annual investor conference. Prosecutors say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Mangione was arrested as he ate breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan after the restaurant’s manager told a 911 dispatcher, “I have a customer here that some other customers were suspicious of — that he looks like the CEO shooter from New York.”

The manager told the dispatcher that she searched online for photos of the suspect that police disseminated. But, as Mangione sat in the restaurant, she said she could only see his eyebrows because he had a beanie pulled down close to his eyes and was wearing a medical face mask.

On Monday, a few dozen Mangione supporters watched the hearing from the back of the courtroom.

One wore a green T-shirt that said: “Without a warrant, it’s not a search, it’s a violation.” Another woman held a doll of the Luigi video game character and had a smaller figurine of him clipped to her purse.

Court officials say the hearing could take more than a week.

Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.