Two of the highest ranking police officials at the scene where Luigi Mangione was arrested spent the bulk of Thursday on the witness stand defending their actions to search his backpack without a warrant.

Mangione's team has pushed to exclude evidence from the backpack search from his upcoming trial for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Lieutenant William Hanelly, the highest ranking officer on scene, was adamant Thursday his team did not need a warrant to search the bag where they located ammunition and later a handgun and silencer, among other things.

Hanelly said because Mangione was being arrested on Pennsylvania state charges, a conditional rule that allows "search incident to arrest" applied to Mangione's backpack. He was the one in charge of authorizing both put

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