John Dougherty extortion trial: Day-by-day updates

John Dougherty was back in court, facing his third trial on federal felony charges in as many years. This time, he was charged along with his nephew, Greg Fiocca, with threatening a union contractor amid a dispute over Fiocca’s job performance and pay while working in 2020 on the construction of the Live! Casino in South Philadelphia.

The stakes were high. Dougherty, once the most powerful union leader in the state, has been convicted in two previous cases — a 2021 bribery trial involving City Councilmember Bobby Henon and an embezzlement trial last year in which he and six others were accused of stealing more than $600,000 from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He’s slated to be sentenced later this year.

The third trial, however, ended in a mistrial, as jurors said they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

Here’s a recap of the latest developments from court and recent coverage:

Juror speaks: Roughly three hours into their marathon day of deliberations, 11 of the 12 jurors were ready to acquit Dougherty and Fiocca, according to a member of the panel who spoke to The Inquirer. But for nearly eight hours more, in the cramped Reading conference room, a lone holdout stood her ground, grinding the panel’s discussions to a standstill and eventually forcing a mistrial in the case. The juror’s account provided new insights into how the jury of six men and six women viewed the government’s evidence as prosecutors weigh whether to retry embattled labor leader and his nephew again. “Several of us thought it … didn’t feel like a strong case,” the juror said, adding that some members of the panel described it as “government overreach.” Read more: Full story

» READ MORE: 'Inside Johnny Doc's Trial' newsletter: The mistrial madness edition

Day 8, April 25: After the jury’s first, and only, day of deliberations, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl said the panel was hopelessly deadlocked after 11 hours of debate and declared in a mistrial. The decision offered an ambiguous conclusion to Dougherty’s third felony trial in as many years after previous convictions on bribery and embezzlement charges. Prosecutors did not immediately say whether they intend to retry the case. As for Dougherty, who celebrated his 64th birthday waiting on the jury’s verdict, he allowed only a brief smile to flash across his face as the trial came to an inconclusive end. He left the courthouse with his family just after 10 p.m., saying: “I’m going home to spend the last two hours of my birthday with my wife.” Read more: Full story | As it happened

» READ MORE: A judge has declared a mistrial in John Dougherty’s extortion trial. What happens now?

Day 7, April 24: In their final pitches to jurors, attorneys in John Dougherty’s federal extortion trial sought to cement two vastly different portraits of the former labor leader with the panel charged with rendering a verdict in the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Costello described Dougherty as an enabler, willing to overlook his nephew’s 2020 assault on a supervisor and use every tool at his disposal – including threats of economic harm – to keep him employed. But the defense shot back, describing the ex-union chief as a man exceedingly devoted to keeping all union members employed and paid the all the wages they deserved. Those arguments came after a whirlwind day of witnesses as both sides rushed to tie up loose ends in the cases they’d presented to the jury. Read more: Full story | As it happened

Day 6, April 23: Prosecutors played a recording of an Aug. 24, 2020, meeting between Dougherty and Local 98′s business agents for jurors, airing publicly for the first time what has become one of the most controversial pieces of evidence they collected in their case against the former labor leader. The tape, made by a mole within Dougherty’s ranks and shared later with the FBI, features Dougherty still seething about the falling out between Fiocca and his bosses at the Live! Casino and Hotel project. He told the agents there should never have been any question that they would be taking his nephew’s side. “We weren’t down there to make kumbaya,” Dougherty said on the recording. “F— kumbaya. You’re f— business agents representing the stewards who we appoint — right, wrong, or indifferent.” Read more: Full story | As it happened

Day 5, April 22: Prosecutors shifted their focus toward detailing Dougherty’s reaction to Fiocca’s assault on one of his bosses with a series of witnesses who spoke directly to the union chief in the hours after the attack. Fran Rothwein, a Local 98 foreman on the casino job told jurors that Dougherty was “screaming” mad at the project’s management after learning they’d docked Fiocca’s pay and were pushing to have him booted from the job. Dougherty threatened pull all Local 98 electricians from the site, effectively shutting down the project, and to interfere with the contractor’s ability to land future work in the city, Rothwein said. Despite his reservations, the job’s electrical contractor Ray Palmieri told jurors, he continued to employ Fiocca out of concern for what might happen if he didn’t. Read more: Full story | As it happened

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Day 4, April 19: With a key government witness, Rich Gibson, still on the stand, defense attorneys had their first chance to scrutinize the recording of his heated 2020 altercation with Fiocca, and to grill the man who made it. They sought to dispel any notion that it amounted to an extortionate threat. Yet, the project manager stood firm. He felt cowed, he said, into keeping Fiocca on the job. Read more: Full story | As it happened

Day 3, April 18: Rich Gibson, a project manager on the Live! Casino project in 2020 and a central witness in the government’s case against Fiocca and Dougherty, took the witness stand as the trial entered its third day. And prosecutors played for jurors the secret 40-minute recording he made of an Aug. 19, 2020 altercation he had with Fiocca, that now forms the basis for the government’s extortion case. Gibson said Fiocca, enraged over a pay dispute, spit on him, choked and slapped him, grabbed him by the throat and threw him onto a table. In between that beating and threats of future violence, he threatened to get his uncle involved. “We’re pulling the whole job…right now,” Fiocca said in the recording played in court. “I’m calling my uncle already. We’re pulling everyone off the job.” Read more: Full story | As it happened

Day 2, April 17: As the trial opened, it quickly became clear that prosecutors and defense lawyers held very different views on the Aug. 19, 2020, confrontation between Greg Fiocca and his supervisor at the Live! Casino job site that forms the backbone of the government’s case. As prosecutors told it in their opening pitch to jurors, Fiocca assaulted the man and John Dougherty later threatened to shut down the site and ensure its primary electrical contractor never worked in the city again. Defense lawyers told jurors Fiocca snapped after months of harassment by his bosses and that Dougherty wasn’t making threats, but rather seeking to support a member of his union who believed he’d been shorted wages. Testimony from prosecutors’ first witnesses sketched in Fiocca’s troubled history at the casino job site in the months leading up to the attack. He frequently went missing while on the job, or didn’t show up at all, they said. Read more: Full story | As it happened

Day 1, April 15: For the third time in three years, John Dougherty strode into a federal courthouse preparing to once again select a jury to determine his fate. “This is old news,” the former labor leader quipped to reporters before the selection process began. “You should be up with Donald Trump instead of with John Dougherty,” he said, referencing another, arguably higher profile, trial unfolding 100 miles away. But unlike at the trial of the former president, lawyers in Dougherty’s case by the end of the day had finished their work selecting the six men and six women who will ultimately decide the case. Read more: Full Story | As it happened

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The setup: By all accounts, Fiocca, a union electrician, was less than a model employee. He rarely showed up for work, was once caught sleeping on the job, and had a history across multiple postings of mouthing off to his bosses. He was laid off from a Market East construction site in 2016 after he spit on a supervisor. Then came a job site skirmish that has now landed him and Dougherty in federal court. The men stand accused of extorting a union contractor who in 2020 attempted to dock Fiocca’s pay over his poor job performance. Read more: Full Story

» READ MORE: John Dougherty's extortion case, explained

Embezzlement trial, December 2023: Dougherty and Brian Burrows, the former president of Local 98, were convicted after a four-week trial of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from their union to pay for pricey dinners, home repairs, travel, and mundane goods like groceries. Five others pleaded guilty before the trial, though none of them agreed to testify against Dougherty. Read more: Day-by-day updates

Bribery trial, November 2021: After a six-week trial, a federal jury found Dougherty guilty in a corruption case in which prosecutors had accused him of paying off Henon with a union salary and tickets to sporting events. In exchange, they said, Henon, who was also convicted, essentially sold the powers of his City Council seat, allowing Dougherty to use them to exact revenge on a series of personal and professional rivals. Read more: Day-by-day updates