In court, whether as a prosecutor or judge, Jeffrey A. Manning controlled the room.
With a commanding presence, deep knowledge of the rules of evidence and a knack for the most minute of details, Manning was known for his brilliant legal acumen, an occasional short temper and a quick wit.
Always impeccably dressed – sometimes with suspenders and matching tie – he was known in the Allegheny County Courthouse, too, for his loyalty and willingness to mentor new attorneys and incoming judges.
With an ego such that he had his judicial staff cut newspaper articles out each time his cases were mentioned so they could be added to his scrapbooks, Manning presided over the most high-profile cases in Pittsburgh for the better part of three decades.
Manning, of Mt. Lebanon, died Monday morning, Aug. 12, 2024. He was 77.
A graduate of Duquesne University law school, and a former state and federal prosecutor, Manning was elected to his first 10-year term as a common pleas court judge in 1989.
He was retained three times — most recently in 2019.
Manning retired in 2021.
“The command he had over that courtroom,” said John Rago, who served as Manning’s law clerk for two years and teaches criminal law at Duquesne, “it wasn’t because he was a bully or a hard-ass. He just had an air about him that people knew he was in charge.”
‘He was born to be a lawyer and then a judge’
Patrick Thomassey, a criminal defense attorney, knew Manning from competing against him in high school sports — Manning went to Gateway High School in Monroeville, and Thomassey went to Turtle Creek.
But the two became fast friends when Thomassey took a job as a law student at the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office, where Manning was his boss.
“He taught me a hell of a lot,” Thomassey said.
He remembers watching Manning, who prosecuted homicide cases, prepare for trial.
Manning would read the file, all of the discovery and police reports, and never take a single note, Thomassey said.
Then, when Manning stood up in front of the jury, he remembered every date, every name, every place with ease.
“It never ceased to amaze me,” he said.
Manning continued to have the same encyclopedic knowledge long into his work on the bench.
A reporter might ask if there was precedent for a ruling, and the judge would settle in to spin stories about his prosecution of the case decades earlier.
Thomassey called him a great lawyer and an even better judge.
“He’d look at cases and always make the tough calls,” he said. “He wasn’t afraid to make it and never hesitated.”
During Manning’s time on the bench, he presided over many of the most high-profile cases to go through the Grant Street courthouse.
Among them: the death penalty trial of Richard Baumhammers, convicted of killing six people in a racially motivated, multi-county killing spree; Richard Poplawski, convicted of killing three Pittsburgh police officers in 2009; and the trial of former state Sen. Jane Orie, convicted of using her office staff to fund political work.
Bruce Antkowiak, a law professor at Saint Vincent College, worked with Manning in the U.S. Attorney’s office.
While Manning’s personality was outgoing, Antkowiak said, it became electric when court went into session.
“He tried cases with a passion and ability that few have ever matched but, in all cases, he set an example of trying to make sure that whatever it was, the outcome he achieved was the right one,” Antkowiak said.
Rago agreed, praising Manning for creating the bail modification review process that allows defendants who are held without bail by a district judge to petition common pleas court for release.
“He made a lot of tough calls,” he said. “He was always looking for the better way to get the right result,” Rago said.
Manning served as president judge in Allegheny County from 2013 to 2018. The day his colleagues voted unanimously to confirm him, his staff and Thomassey gathered in his courtroom. As Manning returned from the vote, they lined up to cheer for him while playing “Hail to the Chief.”
Manning taught trial advocacy at Duquesne, and his students sat rapt in the jury box in his courtroom as he lectured each week.
He also previously served as chair of the state’s criminal procedural rules committee.
Thomassey said his friend knew more about the rules of evidence than anyone he’d ever met. If Thomassey had a difficult legal issue before a different judge, he would call Manning to ask for advice.
“He’d tell me the rule of evidence to get it admitted, and then in the next breath, tell me the rule of evidence to keep it out,” Thomassey said. “He was born to be a lawyer and then a judge.”
A twinkle in his eye
William Costopoulos, who went to college with Manning, defended Orie.
The trial was contentious, he said, but Manning kept the parties steady.
“He not only had a command of the law but instincts essential to the judiciary,” Costopoulos said.
After Orie’s first trial in 2011 ended in a mistrial, the prosecution announced it would retry her.
Manning issued a judicial ruling saying that it could. Costopoulos appealed, based on double jeopardy.
“I thought I was going to have him reversed,” he said. “I didn’t.”
“He had a tendency to make the right rulings,” Costopoulos said. “Though he could be cantankerous in court, it was never personal. It was his judicial style that some lawyers may not have liked. But the well of the courtroom is a contact sport, and he kept the parties in line.”
But Costopoulos also recounted Manning’s playful side.
When he was on the bench, the judge would become infuriated if a cell phone rang in his courtroom.
During the Orie trial, former U.S. Attorney Jerry Johnson, for whom Manning worked as a first assistant and with whom Costopoulos was friends, stopped by to watch a session.
As Johnson sat in the gallery, Costopoulos said, Manning dialed his friend’s number to see if his cell phone would ring in the courtroom.
“It was buzzing in his pocket,” Costopoulos said.
Johnson pulled the phone out, saw it was Manning and looked up at the bench.
The judge looked back with a twinkle in his eye, Costopoulos said.
Manning was also known as a great singer in the courthouse. At the annual bench-bar conference held at Seven Springs, he frequently performed in The Big Show with other judges and attorneys.
“He was very talented,” said Judge Jill E. Rangos, whose courtroom on the third floor was next to Manning’s for many years.
She said the judge loved Halloween and brought in two costumes each year – one for the morning court session and one for the afternoon.
“He was a great leader and always had his door open, no matter what,” Rangos said.
“For people who didn’t know his personality, he appeared to be tough,” she said. “He was always extremely compassionate and supremely sensitive.
“He wasn’t afraid to cry when the moment called for it.”
Manning was also no stranger to controversy.
In 1995, he and his then-fiancee were accused of using a racial epithet at an employee at a security checkpoint at Pittsburgh International Airport. Manning denied the allegations, but the story was reported by local media outlets and became the subject of an inquiry by the state Judicial Conduct Board. The Court of Judicial Discipline ultimately found there was not sufficient evidence to sustain the complaint.
Two years later, Manning sued WPXI for defamation over its coverage of the story, but he lost when the trial court found — and the state Superior Court affirmed — that the judge could not show actual malice on the part of the station.
Then, about 10 years later, Manning became embroiled in a federal grand jury investigation over whether the judge received gifts from attorneys appearing before him.
No charges were ever filed.
Rago said he was called to testify in Harrisburg over the airport incident.
“He took some slings and arrows he didn’t deserve,” Rago said. “There isn’t an ounce of bigotry in him.”
He paused, then added, “he didn’t like stupid.”
Manning could also easily lose his patience.
He sometimes snapped at staff in the courtroom — if a phone rang for too long or they didn’t get him the file he needed quickly enough — but in chambers, outside of proceedings, his staff would laugh and tease each other.
Long-time attorneys in the courthouse often used Manning’s chambers as a home base, popping in first thing in the morning to greet his staff and grab a snack from atop a cabinet right outside the courtroom that almost always had some kind of sweet treat on it.
It was like a revolving door.
There was a sense of camaraderie there — even among the prosecutors and defense attorneys who, once their hearings began, would be, figuratively, at each other’s throats.
Sandy Leasure was Manning’s judicial secretary.
Before she started in the position, her friends asked her if she was sure she wanted to take the job, acknowledging that Manning was brilliant but short-tempered.
Leasure thought she was up to the challenge, but “On Day One, I thought to myself, ‘I’m out of here. I can’t work for this maniac,’” Leasure said.
But she stuck it out.
“He just won my heart,” she said through tears Monday. “Because after a while, you realize who this person is, what he means.
“He had so many great friends, and they all loved him in spite of himself.”
Leasure stayed 32 years.
“He was like a big brother to me,” she said. “He would yell at me, but I’d yell back.”
Somewhere in the middle, Leasure said, Manning became her best friend.
“I’d do it all over again.”
Manning’s son, Ricky, is a commander in the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office.
He also is an accomplished singer who performs at events in Pittsburgh and around the region. Judge Manning’s daughter, Dr. Astrid E. Manning, is a chiropractor who returned to medical school and is currently doing her residency in internal medicine at UPMC Mercy.
Manning spoke often of his children with pride.
“Like any dedicated public servant, he faced the relentless demands of a profession that often weighed heavily on him and his time with us,” Ricky Manning said. “Yet, we understood the significance of being the children of a true champion of the law and a protector of justice.”
Ricky Manning said his dad poured the same unwavering passion and love into his family and close friends.
But it is his grandchildren, James, Madeline, Elizabeth and Isaac, who will miss him most.
“Especially the way he proudly spoiled them with ice cream, Oreos, and icebox cake,” Ricky Manning said.
Manning’s wife of 15 years, Olga Salvatori, said her husband found his calling as a public servant and dedicated his life to it.
He had the ability to light up a room, she said, and everyone always wanted to be around him.
Salvatori, an attorney, often visited Manning’s courtroom and watched the cases he presided over, sometimes slipping him notes.
Their adoration of each other was clear.
“We loved and protected each other fiercely, we supported each other and were each other’s greatest advocate,” she said. “We were best friends.”
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2019 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of “Death by Cyanide.” She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.
