The judge doesn’t control the timing. If the defence wants to call a lot of evidence on a suppression issue, the judge generally has to sit and listen. The judge has to respect the accused’s right to defend themself. (Unless the evidence gets duplicative or something.)
And then if the prosecution needs to call a lot of evidence in rebuttal, it’s got that right.
Normally the defence doesn’t have the money to spend a lot of time on individual motions. In this case, Mangione appears to have considerable legal resources.
As I understand, the connection between “guy who stood there and shot” vs. “guy we think is the same guy, in coffee shop, in hostel” is marginal, circumstantial? No smoking gun, so to speak. The backpack provides the (no longer smoking) gun.
Can you arrest someone for a fake ID? What’s the charge? OTOH, he provided the same fake ID they were searching for, that he used in the NYC hostel.
People often think that slick lawyers are able to get criminals freed based on technicalities. That’s rarely the case. To the contrary, all of the technical exceptions to the rules usually favor law enforcement.
inevitable discovery is a good example. (Another is “good faith exception”) Basically, if the police would have been able to obtain a warrant at a later time, the fact that they didn’t have one at the time they conducted the search shouldn’t prevent the evidence from being used at trial.
Here, I won’t be surprised if it carries the day for the prosecution.
People have heard me say this before: I hate the word “technicalities” in this context.
Is the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States a “technicality”? Because that’s what is in issue in this motion: Did the agents of the state breach an individual’s constitutional rights?
Maybe my use of “technicality” was misplaced, but what I was referring to is the fact that the courts will often say, “yes the amendment was violated, but it doesn’t really matter, so we’ll excuse it.”
The doctrine of “inevitable discovery”, which is apparently being argued by the government in Mangione’s case, is but one example.
I mentioned “good faith” above: in a recent Florida court case, the court ruled that the smell of marijuana alone is not a basis to search a car anymore (since it’s quasi legal, in that you can have it with a prescription). They’ve even extended that to the smell of burnt marijuana, since it’s possible to buy over the counter hemp products that smell the same.
But, the court allowed the search anyway. They said that the cops wouldn’t have been aware of this new change in the law, so they were acting in “good faith” when they searched. It’s allowable.
Things like this happen routinely, and the breaks usually favor law enforcement, not the citizen.
Yes and no. The judge certainly needs to give the defendant a chance to make their case, but I’ve often seen them put limits on the time. But, I’m not surprised that’s it’s taking “several days.” Murder cases get the court’s time and attention. Half a day wouldn’t be unusual for a drug bust, for example.
One of the more recent SCOTUS cases on qualified immunity, for example, says unless there is a very good circumstance match precedent case that a LEO lost their immunity, then they don’t because there’s no precedent so “no way they could have known” they were acting outside their legal boundaries. Thus, making it almost impossible to establish further limits.
I’ve heard of 15,000 pages of discovery in civil cases before. For a “big” criminal case, it doesn’t seem over the top. But I am merely a district court reporter. (Although since this is a New York criminal court thing, I guess it’s equivalent to my workplace.)
Mary Trump mentions that in her civil case against her grandfather’s heirs over the will, the relevant documents were essentially a wall of boxes. Obviously, the “drown them in paper” strategy. Fortunately, there were actually two sets of boxes of everything, so the NYTimes reporters were happy to take one copy and analyze Trump Sr’s business practices.
Rather, compliance with the “law governing civil disclosure”strategy. A party to a civil suit is generally required to disclose all potentially relevant documents. In a major case, that can be a huge number of docs. Failure to fi so can lead to sanctions.