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Death
threats cause Galati to quit case | Harkat
site | Jaballah
| Khadr | Project
threadbare | Galati
| The
racist U.S. terrorists the U.S. gov't and media are not putting
on the prime time news
| The
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into force in 1982.
It was the so-called War on Drugs which allowed the police --
both local and RCMP -- to gain public support for violating the
Charter Rights of certain people. The RCMP had long been responsible
for gathering information on people and using this information
to barter with other organizations within Canada and internationally.
In 1984 CSIS was established but the RCMP maintained its own
secret police. Over the years the RCMP built up a booming business,
copyrighting emblems, insignias etc and contracting to perform
services such as information gathering, finding people, stinging
people and extracting confessions by using means which went beyond
what police services who contracted with them would accept. The
drug war helped fill jails and provided excuses for building
more jails. But the War on Terror? This has opened up a whole
new frontier. No one is safe as innocent people are targeted
and we even see agents going after other agents. |
Steven Manning
Former Chicago police officer
was awarded $6.6M after suing the FBI. One again, we see that
there has been no accountability from those who framed him. They
are still working at their high-paid jobs and received praise
from the federal prosecutor who defended them during the civil
trial
- A jailhouse snitch put
Steven Manning on death row
From Northwestern
Law Center on Wrongful Convictions (Many more cases can be
found on this site)
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.
Manning was exonerated on January
19, 2000, after which he was sent to Missouri, where he remained
in prison on unrelated charges until February 26, 2004, when
he also was exonerated of those charges. 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.
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 of 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 person exonerated and released from death row after
capital punishment was resumed in 1977 in Illinois.
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.
STEVEN L. MANNING
From
Public Interest Litigation Clinic
On February 26, 2004, Steven Manning walked out of the Platte
County, Missouri, Jail after spending nearly 14 years behind
bars for crimes he did not commit. Mr. Manning, an ex-Chicago,
Illinois, Police Officer, was convicted in 1992 and sentenced
to life imprisonment for kidnapping two drug dealers, and holding
them for ransom in Clay County, Missouri. Shortly thereafter,
Manning was returned to Illinois, where he was tried, convicted,
and sentenced to death for murder. Both the Missouri kidnapping
and the Illinois murder convictions rested upon unreliable informant
testimony and governmental misconduct.
In 1998, the Illinois Supreme
Court reversed Mr. Manning's Illinois conviction and death sentence.
See People v. Manning, 695 N.E.2d 423 (Ill. 1998). A few months
later, after new counsel exposed the extent of the governmental
misconduct that led to his conviction, the State of Illinois
dropped all charges against him. However, Mr. Manning remained
incarcerated on his Missouri kidnapping convictions.
Lawyers from the Clinic were
appointed to represent Mr. Manning in his federal habeas corpus
challenge to his Missouri kidnaping convictions in 1996. This
litigation culminated with a 2002 decision from the Eighth Circuit
Court of Appeals, granting Mr. Manning a new trial based upon
the fact that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated by the
use of jailhouse informant testimony against him. Manning v.
Bowersox, 310 F.3d 571 (8th Cir. 2002). The Eighth Circuit declined
to address Manning's other primary contention, that his conviction
was also tainted by the prosecution's use of perjured testimony
against him at trial. Clay County prosecutors elected to dismiss
all of the charges rather than pursue a second trial.
Mr. Manning is currently pursuing
a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the FBI and other government
agents based upon the governmental misconduct that led to his
conviction and death sentence in Illinois. It is expected that
this case will go to trial or be settled in the upcoming months.
See Manning v. Miller, 355 F.3d 1028 (7th Cir. 2004). Mr. Manning
has thus far enjoyed his first few days of freedom with his friends
in a rural Missouri setting. We will keep you posted on further
developments regarding his ongoing civil litigation.
Jury awards $6.6
million to man 'framed' by FBI
'It's a long, long way from Death Row.'
By Matt O'Connor; Chicago
Tribune staff reporter, January 24, 2005
A federal jury today awarded
nearly $6.6 million in damages to former Chicago police Officer
Steven Manning, finding two veteran FBI agents framed him for
a Cook County murder that put him on Death Row.
The jury also held that one
of the FBI agents also framed Manning in a Missouri kidnapping
case. Manning spent 14 years in prison before both convictions
were overturned and the prosecutions were dropped.
The damages could go even higher.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly, who presided over the six-week
trial, is yet to rule on whether the United States shares responsibility
with the two agents for malicious prosecutions.
"It's a long, long way
from Death Row to complete vindication,'' Manning said after
the verdict.
The jury deliberated for 612
days before finding FBI Special Agents Robert Buchan and Gary
Miller liable for Manning's wrongful conviction in the 1990 murder
of trucking firm owner James Pellegrino. Buchan was also found
liable in the Missouri kidnapping case.
The jury also found the two
agents had intentionally inflicted emotional distress.
Manning claimed in his civil
suit that the agents had a grudge against him and framed him
for the crimes. The charges surfaced after Manning, who had been
an informant for the FBI, filed a civil harassment suit over
his treatment by the agents when he tried to stop working in
that role, said his attorney, Jon Loevy.
"It's a very unusual thing
that the jury would find FBI agents framed somebody not just
once but twice for capital crimes," Loevy told reporters
outside the downtown Chicago courtroom where jurors returned
their decision.
Federal officials this afternoon
issued a statement saying they "respect the jury system,
the work of this jury and its verdict.'' But they said they remained
"confident that the agents who were sued did not engage
in any misconduct in this matter.''
U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald
and Richard K. Ruminski, acting special agent in charge of the
Chicago office of the FBI, said they would have no further comment.
Both Miller and Buchan remain
with the bureau, according to FBI spokeswoman Cynthia Yates.
In closing arguments Jan. 11,
a federal prosecutor lauded both Buchan and Miller as dedicated,
law-abiding FBI agents.
In a fateful decision, the
FBI used a notorious informant named Tommy Dye to try to elicit
evidence about the Pellegrino murder while Dye and Manning were
incarcerated in Cook County Jail.
Dye asserted he had captured
a confession by Manning on a hidden recorder, but when nothing
was audible, he claimed that the confession came during a two-second
inaudible portion of the recording.
He claimed Manning had grabbed
him by the arm, bent him over, put a finger to his head as if
it was a gun and said, "This is how I killed Pellegrino."
A Tribune investigation in
November 1999 examined Manning's conviction as well as prosecutors'
use of jailhouse informants and found both were deeply flawed.
Manning was taken off Death
Row in 2000 and finally freed from prison in February 2004. His
civil suit had sought damages of more than $20 million.
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
