TEST OF INTEGRITY

Officer's Believability Tainted By False Warrant

When he applied to work for the Knox County Sheriff's Department in
1993, Robert V. Manges wrote that he wanted to serve the citizens and
be a "useful asset" to the community.

Department authorities certainly give Manges high marks. They've
recognized him as an Officer of the Year, and six months ago they
promoted him to sergeant. But Manges has since become the focus of a
controversy in the Knox County judicial system.

Because of the officer's role in swearing out a false warrant on a
fictitious defendant, General Sessions Court judges took the
extraordinary step Dec. 16 of issuing an order that curtails Manges'
autonomy in the judicial system.

From now on, the judges said, judicial commissioners were not to
approve any kind of warrant Manges might seek unless he had the
approval and support of the District Attorney General's office.

This month a judge threw out several misdemeanor gambling charges and
a search warrant involving Manges because she had questions about his
credibility. Defense attorneys say Manges is a marked man any time he
takes the stand because the false warrant always will raise doubts
about his truthfulness.

"How do you determine when he's telling the truth and when he's
telling a lie?" said veteran defense lawyer James A.H. Bell.

Manges has deferred comment to Sheriff's Department
administrators.

The department characterized Manges' treatment in the court system as
a "witch hunt" in a statement released last week. Sheriff Tim
Hutchison contrasted the way his officer has been treated,
specifically by General Sessions Court Judge Brenda J. Waggoner, with
witnesses called to testify in trials.

"In the state of Tennessee (and I suspect in many others), people are
routinely sentenced to the electric chair on the basis of testimony
from convicted felons, often in cases where they were participants in
the crime," Hutchison said. "So the testimony of these persons is so
unimpeachable that we will sentence someone to die, based on their
accounting, despite the fact that they have a lifetime record of
lying, of criminal conduct and the added incentive of saving their own
skin.

"Yet we now cannot rely on the testimony of an honest police officer
who was acting under the color of law, in his official capacity, in
the pursuit of the public good."

Back in 1993, Manges made this observation in application papers on
file with the Sheriff's Merit System.

"I believe my moral character and integrity would be of value to the
department," he wrote.

Who is Sgt. Manges?

Manges came to the department at age 22 after a four-year hitch in the
U.S. Navy, where he worked on computers and received training as a
cryptologic technician, according to his personnel file.

Once on board with the Sheriff's Department, Manges quickly went to
work as a narcotics officer. Brenda Lindsay, a lawyer and former
judicial commissioner, said she remembers Manges well because he
brought many warrants for her to review and approve.

"He always seemed like he was working really hard," said Lindsay, who
left her commissioner position in October.

Manges distinguished himself only a few months after being transferred
to the patrol division in 1997. After being alerted to look out for
suspects in a Claxton robbery, he spotted, tracked and stopped the
suspects' black BMW. He found the gun allegedly used in the hold-up.

A letter of commendation from Hutchison was placed in his file. His
work garnered him recognition as 1997 Officer of the Year.

The Gresham Deception

By 1998, Manges was back working as a narcotics officer. He was
assigned in October 1998 to take part in the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's Drug Task Force, a metropolitan area team.

On May 21, Manges went to Lindsay seeking approval for a drug warrant
for a man he identified as Frankie Lane Gresham, 36, alleged to have
been found with a kilo of cocaine in Knox County.

Lindsay remembers their conversation. She said Manges told her Gresham
was a bad person. According to Manges' warrant, Gresham was stopped
May 19 for speeding on Interstate 40 and a drug dog detected the
cocaine. Manges sought first a $2 million bond and then a $1 million
bond, she said. Lindsay rejected the amounts as being excessive but
approved bond for $100,000.

The commissioner didn't know it, but she had just signed documents for
a man who didn't exist. Manges testified in a hearing Dec. 15 that the
department came up with the idea of creating a fake defendant to try
to catch a "target" in a drug investigation. He testified other
department personnel -- unnamed -- knew of the plan.

Prosecutors say they knew nothing about the scheme. Judges had no idea
what was going on.

General Sessions Court Judge Brenda J. Waggoner assigned a public
defender to represent Gresham, who supposedly was being held in jail.
Nobody in the judicial system actually had seen the phantom defendant
because he never was brought to court on his designated appearance
dates.

The public defender's office and prosecutors had decided they were
dealing with someone who didn't exist. The ruse at last came to light
in late July when Carleton E. Bryant, a lawyer for the department,
informed prosecutors.

Truth Or Consequences

In recent weeks, defense lawyers have gone after Manges with
relish.

On Dec. 1, lawyer Allen Schwartz questioned Manges' truthfulness when
the officer testified in General Sessions Court about several
misdemeanor gambling cases. Prodded by Schwartz's cross-examination,
the officer had to testify about the fake defendant. Judge Waggoner
dismissed several cases that day because of questions about the
officer's truthfulness.

The officer also was the state's key witness Dec. 15 in a hearing to
consider a search warrant issued in the same gambling investigation.
Under questioning from lawyer Ralph Harwell, the officer acknowledged
the Gresham deception.

"You swore to the facts? You said, 'Here's the facts, judge?'" asked
Harwell, who was representing alleged gambling promoter Raymond M.
Donahue.

"Correct," Manges replied.

Harwell continued: "The facts were a lie, weren't they?"

"Yes," the officer replied.

Manges said there was no "willful intent" on his part to deceive
Lindsay.

"The only person who was meant to be deceived was the target of the
investigation," he said.

Judge Waggoner, however, was not satisfied. Without corroborating
evidence, she ruled she had to suppress the search warrant and
evidence seized as a result of it.

With out the warrant, District Attorney General Randy Nichols said he
will try to prosecute Donahue at a preliminary hearing Jan. 19.

In June, a couple weeks after the Gresham warrant was issued, the
Sheriff's Department promoted Manges to sergeant. A recent review of
his personnel file shows he has not been reprimanded for the Gresham
warrant. Hutchison said a reprimand was unnecessary.

"Sgt. Manges was acting in his official capacity, in the course of a
legitimate and viable undercover investigation," the sheriff said in a
statement. "He not only had no criminal intent; he didn't even set out
to consciously violate official policy. This was not the work of some
sort of renegade cop who is unconcerned about the rules."

To lawyer Bell the warrant was a "perversion" of the judicial system,
which depends on the integrity of judges, police officers, clerks,
defense lawyers and prosecutors to work fairly.

Bell said he wants to know who in the department told Manges it was
all right to swear out a false warrant. He questions why the Sheriff's
Department felt it could act on its own without at least informing the
district attorney of what it was doing.

"The last time I looked in the Book of Proverbs, it said it was an
abomination to put your thumb on the scales of justice," Bell said.
"And that's exactly what this is. It can't be justified even under the
guise of law and order."