Prosecutors will push to put twice-convicted labor leader John J. Dougherty behind bars for more than a decade at his sentencing hearing next week on bribery and embezzlement charges.
In court filings Friday, government lawyers painted Dougherty — once the most powerful union official in the state — as an entitled and bullying leader who routinely stole from union coffers and bribed former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon to avenge his personal and petty grievances.
They recommended that U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl send Dougherty to prison for anywhere from 11 to 14 years and order him to help pay more than $2.1 million to Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the union he led for nearly 30 years.
“Dougherty’s crimes have inflicted immeasurable harm upon Local 98 and the City of Philadelphia,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Costello wrote in the sentencing memo filed Friday. “Justice demands that he be held fully accountable for his actions.”
The proposed punishment for Dougherty — who will learn his fate Thursday during a federal court hearing in Reading — is more than three times the stiffest sentence given to any of the Local 98 officials and members sentenced so far after their convictions in a sweeping 2019 indictment that prompted the ouster of much of 5,000-member union’s top leadership.
If imposed, it would mark a stunning reversal for Dougherty who over three decades transformed Local 98 into one of Philadelphia’s most effective advocates for workers and a political powerhouse that propelled dozens of allies into statewide and local office.
Lawyers for Dougherty did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. They are expected to file their own sentencing recommendation with the court in the coming days.
But prosecutors, in their filing, defended the lengthy prison term they are seeking, saying no other defendant in the case had committed as “broad and pervasive a swath of crimes” as Dougherty.
The ex-union chief was the only one, they noted, to have twice taken his case before a jury and lost.
In 2021, jurors convicted him and Henon — who is serving a 3 ½ year sentence — in a sweeping bribery scheme finding that the ex-union leader had effectively bought the council member with a $70,000-a-year union salary and other perks and then used him to corruptly bend Philadelphia’s government to his will.
Prosecutors said Friday Dougherty “got what he paid for.”
As the city began renegotiating a 15-year franchise agreement with Comcast in 2015, Dougherty used Henon’s influence over the talks to exact concessions the cable company that benefitted union electricians.
And that same year, as Dougherty was running to lead the Building Trades Council, an umbrella group of the city’s labor unions, he pushed Henon to propose legislation updating the city’s plumbing code in ways he knew would irk the industry’s union. The reason? Dougherty wanted something to hold over the union leaders’ heads to secure their vote in the Building Trades race.
Evidence at trial showed Dougherty’s demands on Henon weren’t only to advance what he saw as the interests of his union members. When a tow truck driver tried to haul away his car in 2015, Dougherty vowed before the truck had even left the parking lot that Henon would introduce legislation the next day to investigate the company for predatory practices.
His instructions to Henon, according to wiretaps played for jurors in that case: “F— them to death.”
“Every time he demanded that Henon take some official action that Dougherty wanted, Henon held up his end of their corrupt bargain,” Costello wrote in his court filing Friday. “He never said no.”
All the while, the prosecutor continued, Dougherty was engaging in another scheme — along with other union officers and allies — to embezzle more than $600,000 from Local 98′s coffers, which they spent on everything from pricey Atlantic City birthday bashes and extensive home repairs to dozens of mundane purchases for groceries and household goods.
A jury convicted him and former union president Brian Burrows on those charges after a separate trial last year. Burrows was sentenced to four years in prison last week.
“Dougherty used his power and authority to steal from the union and to allow his codefendants to do the same,” Costello said. “It’s difficult to overstate the seriousness of Dougherty’s crimes given the unique positions of trust that he held.”
In addition, the prosecutor urged the judge to consider threats Dougherty made to potential witnesses and members of his union shortly after his 2019 indictment.
In a series of meetings secretly recorded by a confidential informant in Dougherty’s inner circle, the union leader was caught on tape vowing to root out anyone from within his ranks who was informing against him.
“Instead of trying to reassure the employees and members of Local 98 that no matter the outcome of the pending criminal case, he would make sure their future and the future of the union was secure, Dougherty … chose instead to spread fear of retribution and attempt to intimidate potential witnesses,” Costello wrote.
Nothing Dougherty might tout at his sentencing Thursday about his 30 years of leadership should overshadow those crimes, the prosecutor said.
“No good deeds can outweigh the damage done by Dougherty’s betrayal of the members who paid his salary,” he said. “And he benefits to the community from the growth of Local 98 do not outweigh the harm to the public’s confidence in government.”