On February 26

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 (8^th 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 (7^th Cir. 2004). Mr. Manning has thus far enjoyed his first few days of freedom with his friends in a rural Missouri setting.

In January of 2005, a federal jury in Chicago awarded Steven Manning 6.6 million dollars in damages in his lawsuit against two FBI agents. The trial judge has yet to rule on a separate claim for damages against the government.