The diodes allow the CD4017 to charge the capacitors at the base of a transistor but prevent the CD4017 from discharging the capacitor to turn off the transistor and LED.After a while those LED's stay charged and don't go off all the way. I'm not sure if that was the design or maybe my ground is not that good.
Add a 10k resistor to ground at the 47k base resistor at the diodes.
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