Steve MillsContact ReporterChicago Tribune
More than two decades ago, testimony by a jailhouse informant named Tommy Dye helped Cook County prosecutors obtain a death sentence for murder against a former Chicago cop who had reputed mob connections and had washed out of the department.
When Dye refused to testify at a retrial, though, the case fell apart, ultimately leading to Steven Manning's release from prison. Two weeks later, then-Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on all executions in Illinois, citing the troubling use of jailhouse snitches among many reasons.
Now, Dye finds himself in the middle of another potentially wrongful conviction — his own. A top prosecutor in the San Diego County district attorney's office said it is examining a burglary case to determine if Dye — in prison in California since 2004 — was wrongly convicted.
The Cook County state's attorney's office played a role in securing Dye's conviction in San Diego — a fact Dye blamed on retribution for his refusal to help prosecutors here salvage their death penalty case against Manning, who now is known as Steven Mandell.
In a telephone interview, Dye disputed the account of a Cook County state's attorney's investigator who said that he confessed to the burglary. Dye, who has been in and out of trouble for decades, said he is far too savvy about the criminal justice system to ever confess.
If not for the involvement of Cook County law enforcement officials, "I never would've had to deal with this," Dye said from the California Institution for Men in Chino, the southern California prison where he is being held. "This case had no evidence."
The use of jailhouse snitches by prosecutors across the country has been criticized as among the most persistent and pernicious problems of the criminal justice system. In most cases, they trade information for leniency, raising questions about their credibility. With so many wrongful convictions involving testimony by jailhouse snitches, Illinois and other states have restricted their use in court.
Dye, now 55, was a prolific snitch. As the Tribune described in a 1999 story that was part of an investigation into Illinois' use of the death penalty, he had deep credibility issues, however. He used a series of aliases and had a string of arrests and convictions, mostly for petty crimes. A handsome charmer by nature and a restaurant waiter by trade, he often swindled women out of their money or jewelry.
His testimony against Mandell was pivotal. A onetime Chicago cop until his arrest in an insurance fraud scheme, Mandell became a suspect in a number of homicides, including some with purported organized crime ties. He was charged with the 1990 murder of James Pelligrino, a trucking firm owner whose widow testified at trial that he had warned her that Mandell might kill him. Dye had secretly recorded conversations with Mandell while both were held at Cook County Jail, but the hidden recording device worn by Dye had malfunctioned, leaving jurors to rely on his word against Mandell.
Still, Mandell was convicted in 1993 and sentenced to death, but five years later, the Illinois Supreme Court granted him a new trial. Shortly after the Tribune story on Dye, he refused to be a witness against Mandell at a retrial, and Cook County prosecutors dropped the charges in early 2000. At the time, that made Mandell the 13th inmate exonerated in Illinois, one more than the state had executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the 1970s.
After a separate case in Missouri — the kidnapping of a drug dealer — was overturned by the courts, Mandell was set free in 2004.
Mandell sued the two FBI agents who had investigated the cases, saying they had framed him. A jury awarded him $6.6 million, but a federal judge in Chicago set aside the judgment on technical grounds. Dye, while insisting in his testimony that Mandell had confessed to him, also alleged during the trial that the agents had acted improperly by feeding him information about the case.
Mandell's freedom was short-lived. He was charged in 2012 with planning to kidnap and dismember a suburban businessman as part of an extortion plot. Mandell alleged the FBI had targeted him because of his lawsuit, but secretly made audio and video tapes provided hours of evidence that persuaded a federal jury to convict him.
He was again sentenced to life in prison.
Dye, meantime, was convicted in San Diego County of residential burglary, even though he was living with a woman in the apartment where the crime allegedly occurred. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but just days after Dye's testimony in Mandell's lawsuit against the FBI, San Diego prosecutors appealed the sentence. The appeals court found Dye was subject to California's three-strikes law, and he was resentenced to 167 years. That was later reduced to 51 years to life.
A key piece of evidence against Dye was testimony from John Duffy, an investigator with the Cook County state's attorney's office who said Dye had confessed the burglary to him. In the recent interview, Dye, however, said Duffy "orchestrated everything from top to bottom" to help obtain his conviction.
In addition, a Dye lawyer said in an affidavit in 2013 that Duffy told her that he believed Dye was targeted because of his role in Mandell's case.
"Mr. Dye was clearly targeted for more harsh treatment based on his having gone 'sideways' on the federal government in the (Mandell) case," another one of Dye's lawyers, Emry Allen, wrote to Deputy District Attorney Brent Neck of the San Diego office's conviction review unit.
Duffy could not be reached for comment. A Tribune Freedom of Information Act request in late February for documents from the state's attorney's office that might reflect involvement of any of its employees has, so far, failed to turn up any records, said the office's open records officer.
Neck said the conviction review unit's examination was focused on the San Diego case, not what happened with Dye in Cook County.
"This case will turn on the facts out here, not the ones from there," Neck said.
Dye said he can appreciate that many people might have little sympathy for him because of the role he has played in the criminal justice system. He said, though, they should be as critical of what has happened to him as they are of others who have been victimized by the system.
"Is it karma to the outsider? Yeah, maybe," he said. "But to me ... it's wrong."
smmills@tribpub.com
Twitter @smmills1960
When Dye refused to testify at a retrial, though, the case fell apart, ultimately leading to Steven Manning's release from prison. Two weeks later, then-Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on all executions in Illinois, citing the troubling use of jailhouse snitches among many reasons.
The Cook County state's attorney's office played a role in securing Dye's conviction in San Diego — a fact Dye blamed on retribution for his refusal to help prosecutors here salvage their death penalty case against Manning, who now is known as Steven Mandell.
In a telephone interview, Dye disputed the account of a Cook County state's attorney's investigator who said that he confessed to the burglary. Dye, who has been in and out of trouble for decades, said he is far too savvy about the criminal justice system to ever confess.
If not for the involvement of Cook County law enforcement officials, "I never would've had to deal with this," Dye said from the California Institution for Men in Chino, the southern California prison where he is being held. "This case had no evidence."
The use of jailhouse snitches by prosecutors across the country has been criticized as among the most persistent and pernicious problems of the criminal justice system. In most cases, they trade information for leniency, raising questions about their credibility. With so many wrongful convictions involving testimony by jailhouse snitches, Illinois and other states have restricted their use in court.
Dye, now 55, was a prolific snitch. As the Tribune described in a 1999 story that was part of an investigation into Illinois' use of the death penalty, he had deep credibility issues, however. He used a series of aliases and had a string of arrests and convictions, mostly for petty crimes. A handsome charmer by nature and a restaurant waiter by trade, he often swindled women out of their money or jewelry.
His testimony against Mandell was pivotal. A onetime Chicago cop until his arrest in an insurance fraud scheme, Mandell became a suspect in a number of homicides, including some with purported organized crime ties. He was charged with the 1990 murder of James Pelligrino, a trucking firm owner whose widow testified at trial that he had warned her that Mandell might kill him. Dye had secretly recorded conversations with Mandell while both were held at Cook County Jail, but the hidden recording device worn by Dye had malfunctioned, leaving jurors to rely on his word against Mandell.
Still, Mandell was convicted in 1993 and sentenced to death, but five years later, the Illinois Supreme Court granted him a new trial. Shortly after the Tribune story on Dye, he refused to be a witness against Mandell at a retrial, and Cook County prosecutors dropped the charges in early 2000. At the time, that made Mandell the 13th inmate exonerated in Illinois, one more than the state had executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the 1970s.
After a separate case in Missouri — the kidnapping of a drug dealer — was overturned by the courts, Mandell was set free in 2004.
Mandell sued the two FBI agents who had investigated the cases, saying they had framed him. A jury awarded him $6.6 million, but a federal judge in Chicago set aside the judgment on technical grounds. Dye, while insisting in his testimony that Mandell had confessed to him, also alleged during the trial that the agents had acted improperly by feeding him information about the case.
Mandell's freedom was short-lived. He was charged in 2012 with planning to kidnap and dismember a suburban businessman as part of an extortion plot. Mandell alleged the FBI had targeted him because of his lawsuit, but secretly made audio and video tapes provided hours of evidence that persuaded a federal jury to convict him.
He was again sentenced to life in prison.
Dye, meantime, was convicted in San Diego County of residential burglary, even though he was living with a woman in the apartment where the crime allegedly occurred. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but just days after Dye's testimony in Mandell's lawsuit against the FBI, San Diego prosecutors appealed the sentence. The appeals court found Dye was subject to California's three-strikes law, and he was resentenced to 167 years. That was later reduced to 51 years to life.
A key piece of evidence against Dye was testimony from John Duffy, an investigator with the Cook County state's attorney's office who said Dye had confessed the burglary to him. In the recent interview, Dye, however, said Duffy "orchestrated everything from top to bottom" to help obtain his conviction.
In addition, a Dye lawyer said in an affidavit in 2013 that Duffy told her that he believed Dye was targeted because of his role in Mandell's case.
"Mr. Dye was clearly targeted for more harsh treatment based on his having gone 'sideways' on the federal government in the (Mandell) case," another one of Dye's lawyers, Emry Allen, wrote to Deputy District Attorney Brent Neck of the San Diego office's conviction review unit.
Duffy could not be reached for comment. A Tribune Freedom of Information Act request in late February for documents from the state's attorney's office that might reflect involvement of any of its employees has, so far, failed to turn up any records, said the office's open records officer.
Neck said the conviction review unit's examination was focused on the San Diego case, not what happened with Dye in Cook County.
"This case will turn on the facts out here, not the ones from there," Neck said.
Dye said he can appreciate that many people might have little sympathy for him because of the role he has played in the criminal justice system. He said, though, they should be as critical of what has happened to him as they are of others who have been victimized by the system.
"Is it karma to the outsider? Yeah, maybe," he said. "But to me ... it's wrong."
smmills@tribpub.com
Twitter @smmills1960