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Attorney Bryan Hershman, who is representing Manos in state court where he’s charged with two felonies, said there were financial and strategic reasons for his client to remain in jail.
“He could probably come up with the money needed to bail out,” Hershman said. “But his family needs that money, and I don’t want him to get out and have the feds swoop in and pick him up.”
So, why request a bail reduction at all?
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Hershman said.
Thursday’s action was the latest twist in Manos’ legal troubles.
He was convicted in federal court this year of stealing money from a fund set up to benefit the spouses and children of four Lakewood police officers gunned down at a Parkland coffee shop in November 2009.
Manos also admitted stealing money from the police officers guild, but he was not charged with a crime in federal court for those thefts.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bryan sentenced Manos in June to two years, nine months in prison for one count of wire fraud. Bryan gave Manos a couple of months to get his affairs in order before he had to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Ten days before he was supposed to report, county prosecutors charged him with state crimes – second-degree identity theft and forgery – and Tacoma police arrested him. Prosecutors allege he stole the identity of a local accountant to cover up his thefts from the guild.
Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said at the time that his office did not want Manos to get a walk on those alleged crimes just because he’d already been convicted of a federal crime.
Manos, 35, pleaded not guilty and was ordered held in the county jail in lieu of $100,000 bail on the state charges.
He soon after persuaded a judge to let him out for four or five days after posting $10,000 in cash, then reported back to jail, where he has been since.
Deputy prosecutor Phil Sorensen opposed Thursday’s bail reduction.
Sorensen said the original bail amount was appropriate given the serious nature of the charges and that nothing had changed to merit a reduction.
The deputy prosecutor also expressed fears that federal authorities might pick Manos up should he make bail and ship him off to prison, which would make it difficult for state authorities to bring him to court for hearings in his state case.
“What we’d like to do is get our case resolved and then let him do his federal time,” Sorensen said.
Manos’ standard-range sentence on the state charges is three to nine months in jail.
What the feds intend to do with Manos was unknown Thursday.
His prison report date was canceled when he was taken into state custody, said Robert Westinghouse, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Manos in federal court.
Westinghouse said that, as far as he knew, a new date has not yet been established for Manos to report to prison, and he wasn’t sure what federal prison officials would do if Manos made bail and was released from the Pierce County Jail.
“It’s a fluid situation,” he said.
Adam Lynn: 253-597-8644
adam.lynn@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime
@TNTadam
