A jailhouse snitch put Steven Manning on death row
Steven Manning (Photo: Illinois Department of Corrections)
Steven L. Manning, a former Chicago police officer and FBI informant, was sentenced to death by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Edward M. Fiala, Jr., on November 22, 1993, for the murder of James Pellegrino, a suburban trucker and former Manning business partner. The conviction and death sentence rested primarily on the testimony of a jailhouse informant, Thomas Dye.
The conviction was reversed on appeal and the charges against Manning were dropped on January 19, 2000, but he was shipped to Missouri, where he had been convicted of kidnapping. That conviction was reversed on appeal and the charges were dropped in 2004. Manning filed a federal civil rights suit against his former FBI handlers, Robert Buchan and Gary Miller, whom he accused of framing him because he refused to continue working for them. A federal jury in Chicago awarded Manning $6.6 million in damages, but the award was set aside by the trial judge.
The Pellegrino murder
Pellegrino left home on May 14, 1990, after purportedly telling his wife Joyce that if he turned up dead she should call the FBI and report that Manning had killed him. She did exactly that after Pellegrino's body was found floating in the Des Plaines River near the Lawrence Avenue Bridge in Chicago on June 3. He had been shot in the head. His wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape and his head was in a plastic bag and covered with a towel.
The informant
On July 26, 1990, Manning was arrested and placed in the Cook County Jail, where the FBI arranged for him to be assigned to a cell with Dye, a notorious con man, jailhouse informant, and cocaine dealer with a long criminal record, including ten felony convictions, dating to 1978. Dye had recently been sentenced to 14 years in prison on theft and firearms charges and was awaiting trial in three other felony cases.
Dye soon reported that Manning had confessed to the Pellegrino murder. Since Dye was a known liar and perjurer, his claim carried little credibility without corroboration. In an effort to substantiate it, Cook County Assistant State's Attorneys Patrick J. Quinn and William G. Gamboney arranged for Dye to record conversations with Manning. On six hours of tape, Manning proceeded to say certain things that cast him in an unfavorable light, but there was nothing on the tapes about Pellegrino.
The Missouri charges
Before the trial, Manning was taken to Clay County, Missouri, to face trial for the purported kidnaping of two Kansas City drug dealers, Charles Ford and Mark Harris. Although the alleged crime occurred in 1984, the charges were not filed until July 20, 1990, six days before Manning's arrest in the Pellegrino case.
Dye proposed to Manning that they create a phony alibi for the Kansas City crime. With FBI approval, Dye's girlfriend, Sylvia Herrera, then met with Manning to concoct an alibi and thus became the Missouri prosecutors' star witness. The supposed victims could not identify Manning, but the sister of one of them tentatively picked him out of a photo spread. Her identification was uncertain, however, and she failed to identify him in the courtroom.
A 1991 trial ended in a mistrial, due to a hung jury, but Manning was convicted at his second trial in January 1992. Clay County Circuit Court Judge Frank Conley sentenced him to two consecutive life terms plus 100 years. The harsh sentences were based on Manning's prior record. He had been convicted in Cook County in March of 1987 of a $260,000 jewelry heist and sentenced to four years. As a result of that case, Manning was discharged from the Chicago police force and became an FBI informant.
The Cook County trial and Dye's quid pro quo
Even though no physical evidence linked Manning to the Pellegrino murder, Quinn and Gamboney proceeded to take Manning to trial before Judge Fiala and a jury in 1993. Because the murder allegedly had occurred during an armed robbery, it was a capital offense.
Dye testified that Manning had confessed to the crime during six hours of taped conversations, but the recordings contained no such admission. Dye's explanation for the missing admissions were that they occurred during two brief gaps in the tapes, one of which resulted from a malfunction and the other from Dye accidentally covered the microphone, which was tucked into his underwear.
Judge Fialia also permitted Joyce Pellegrino to testify that her husband had told her that if he turned up dead Manning killed him.
The jury found Manning guilty and, after he waived his right to a jury sentencing hearing, he was sentenced to death by Fiala. The prosecutors then arranged for Dye's 14-year prison sentence to be cut to six years.
The Illinois reversal
On April 16, 1998, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the conviction and remanded the case for a new trial, holding that Fiala had erred in allowing the jury to hear both Joyce Pellegrino's testimony and the Dye-Manning tapes, which contained irrelevant and prejudicial references to other crimes allegedly committed by Manning. On January 19, 2000, prosecutors dropped the charges. Manning thus became the thirteenth Illinois death row prisoner since 1977 to win release after all charges were dropped.
The Missouri reversal
Upon his release in Illinois, Manning was returned to Missouri to serve the prescribed sentences for his 1992 kidnaping conviction, which had been affirmed by the Missouri Appellate Court in 1994. After U.S. District Court Judge Ortrie D. Smith denied Manning's petition for a writ of habeas corpus, Manning appealed.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed and remanded the case on the ground of government misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, and judicial error. The government's use of an informant planted in Manning's cell violated his constitutional right to counsel and, as a result Judge Frank Conley should have suppressed it, said the Eighth Circuit, adding that the failure of Manning's trial counsel to object to the introduction of Sylvia Herrera's testimony was ineffective assistance of counsel. created a circumstance ripe for its agents to elicit incriminating statements from petitioner in the absence of counsel. The Eight Circuit order barred Sylvia Herrera from testifying at the retrial, leaving Clay County prosecutors with no case.
On February 26, 2004, all charges were dropped, and Manning walked free after 14 years in custody for convictions predicated on informant testimony.
This case summary was prepared by Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. It may be reprinted, quoted, or posted on other web sites with appropriate attribution.
