Subject: (no subject)
From: Jim Thomas (jthomas@venus.soci.niu.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 19 2000 - 16:30:03 CST
ANOTHER DEATH ROW INMATE CLEARED
By Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong Tribune Staff Writers
January 19, 2000
Steve Manning, a former Chicago police officer sentenced to death
on the word of a jailhouse informant with a long history of
telling lies, became the 13th Illinois Death Row inmate to be
cleared when Cook County prosecutors dropped their charges
against him Tuesday.
In a decision that caught Manning and his attorney by surprise,
Assistant Cook County State's Atty. Scott Cassidy told Cook
County Circuit Judge John J. Moran that prosecutors no longer
plan to retry Manning, whose conviction was reversed on appeal in
1998. Cassidy then exited the nearly empty courtroom and refused
to comment.
The outcome of Manning's case means that Illinois has cleared
more Death Row inmates than it has sent to the execution chamber
since it reinstated capital punishment in 1977. The tally now
stands at 13 inmates exonerated and 12 executed. Manning spent
about 4 1/2 years under a death sentence.
The dramatic holes in the prosecution's case against Manning were
detailed in a recent Tribune series, "The Failure of the Death
Penalty in Illinois." The Tribune investigation found that the
prosecution's star witness against Manning, Tommy Dye, was a con
man and chronic liar who fabricated stories even under oath and
that his testimony incriminating Manning was undercut by the
FBI's own investigative reports. Federal agents had for years
investigated Manning, a corrupt cop linked to an illegal
car-insurance scheme.
"I anticipated an argument from the prosecutor. I'm surprised
beyond belief," Manning said Tuesday in a telephone interview
from Cook County Jail.
"My case is the poster child for what happens to the justice
system when the public's well-founded fear of criminal acts
results in giving police and prosecutors a mandate to convict at
all costs, even if some innocents are wrongfully convicted."
Manning will not be freed as a result of Tuesday's decision. He
remains under a lengthy prison sentence in Missouri on unrelated
kidnapping charges, although he is appealing those convictions as
well.
Regarding the decision to drop the charges against Manning, Bob
Benjamin, a spokesman for Cook County State's Atty. Dick Devine,
said: "While we're sorry to do it, naturally, the fact that
Manning is going to Missouri to serve two life sentences plus
(100) years is some consolation."
When Manning stood trial for murder in 1993, Dye testified that,
while he and Manning shared a Cook County Jail cell, Manning
twice confessed to him the 1990 slaying of a suburban trucking
firm owner, James Pellegrino.
But a secret tape recording of the two men's conversations, made
at the request of the FBI, failed to reveal any such confession,
and Manning has vehemently denied telling Dye that he killed
Pellegrino. Dye claimed the confessions occurred during two brief
gaps in the tapes. FBI debriefing reports of Dye also failed to
note that Dye claimed hearing a confession.
In exchange for his testimony, Dye had his 14-year prison
sentence on theft and firearms charges reduced to 6 years.
Both Manning and his attorney, Raymond J. Smith, said they
believed the Tribune's investigation exposed Dye's lack of
credibility and other problems with the case, making it difficult
for prosecutors to take the case to trial again.
Smith praised Devine for dropping the charges but said he hopes
there also will be an investigation into what went wrong.
"Frankly, it's just not enough to say, `Oh well, we're dismissing
this now and that's the end of it.' This guy's been on Death
Row," he said.
Cassidy announced the state's decision at a hearing that had been
scheduled on two defense motions, one of which alleged that
prosecutors previously had committed misconduct by allowing Dye
to provide what they knew--or should have known--was perjured
testimony. The decision to drop the charges made the argument
moot.
The case was prosecuted by Patrick J. Quinn and William Gamboney.
Quinn, now an Illinois Appellate Court judge, and Gamboney, now
in private practice, did not return calls seeking comment.
Benjamin said that the office dropped the charges because the
Illinois Supreme Court ruling that reversed Manning's conviction
also barred prosecutors from using Dye's tapes at retrial.
Although the tapes include no confession to the Pellegrino
murder, they do cast Manning in a poor light by capturing him
talking about the Missouri case and other illegal schemes.
"With six hours of information on it, I think the court would
have seen what Steve Manning was all about," Benjamin said.
But courts generally refuse to allow such evidence because it
taints the defendant without providing any evidence of guilt with
regard to the crime in question.
Pellegrino was slain on May 14, 1990, and his body dumped in the
Des Plaines River. One of his sisters, Sharon Dugan, said Tuesday
she wasn't surprised at the decision to drop the charges, but she
still thinks Manning
is guilty.
"I'm disappointed that the original conviction was overturned,"
she said.
The Illinois Supreme Court reversed Manning's conviction because
improper hearsay evidence from Pellegrino's wife had been used
against Manning.
The Tribune series detailed the Manning case to illustrate
the problematic use of jailhouse informants to win convictions.
Although prosecutors use such witnesses regularly, jailhouse
informants are considered among the least reliable witnesses in
the criminal justice system.
Such witnesses typically say another inmate confessed to them. In
exchange, jailhouse informants frequently receive a variety of
benefits, such as having pending criminal charges dropped or
sentences reduced.
The Tribune investigation found that since 1977 at least 46
inmates have been sent to Illinois' Death Row in cases in which
prosecutors used a jailhouse informant.
Reflecting how frequently such evidence is linked to wrongful
convictions, jailhouse-informant testimony has helped convict or
condemn five of the state's 13 exonerated Death Row inmates. In
two other cases in which Death Row inmates were exonerated,
prosecutors had jailhouse-informant testimony ready but did not
use it.
Last year, a committee created by the Illinois Supreme Court to
study reforms to the state's death-penalty system considered
proposing that jurors be instructed to view jailhouse-informant
testimony with skepticism. But that committee, which consists of
17 judges, instead wound up referring the proposal to a different
Illinois Supreme Court committee that deals specifically with
jury instructions in criminal cases.
Patrick Tuite, the former chairman of that jury-instruction
committee, said the panel of lawyers and judges voted against the
proposal because committee members could find neither case law
nor a state statute upon which to base such an instruction.
He said he would like to see the state Supreme Court take it upon
itself to create such a jury instruction or have the legislature
prohibit by law the use of jailhouse-informant testimony unless
it is independently corroborated.
The courts in some states, including California, already
regularly warn jurors to view jailhouse-informant testimony
skeptically or require that prosecutors disclose
the complete backgrounds of any informants, along with any
discussions of leniency in exchange for their cooperation.
----------
ON THE INTERNET: Read the Tribune series on the failure of the
death penalty in Illinois at chicagotribune.com/go/deathpenalty
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Mon Jan 01 2001 - 01:05:47 CST