A former drug runner found out Tuesday that he won't have to go back to prison in part because his misdeeds were due to the bad influence of alleged gang leader Aaron Patterson.
Mark Mannie, 39, could have been sentenced to five years but instead the judge told him the 29 months he had already served were punishment enough.
"I feel like the priest who says, 'Go and sin no more,'" said U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer.
Mannie's family, sitting in court, gasped at the decision and Mannie, with tears in his eyes, hugged defense attorney Thomas More Leinenweber.
Mannie, described by prosecutors as a small-time gang member, was totally overshadowed at the 2005 drug trial by the well known Patterson.
Then-Gov. George Ryan released Patterson, a former death row inmate, in 2003 on the grounds that he had been wrongly convicted. He and Mannie were arrested in 2004 on drug and gun charges.
At the trial, Patterson repeatedly yelled and swore. At one point he knocked one defense attorney down and grabbed another by the necktie.
Both men were found guilty but an appeals court erased Mannie's conviction, saying Patterson's outrageous behavior had tainted the trial. Mannie later pleaded guilty to three charges anyway.
But Pallmeyer said he deserved a break after Leinenweber described in emotional terms how Mannie has found a job and is turning his life around, no longer associating with bad influences.
Pallmeyer said Mannie had been "sucked into Mr. Patterson's orbit" and probably wouldn't have gotten into trouble if not for "this intense and very, very confused man -- Aaron Patterson."
She did put Mannie on probation for three years and fined him $500.
Patterson is serving a 30-year sentence.
The Associated Press
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