John Dougherty was for years an unparalleled kingmaker in Philadelphia’s Democratic Party — a charismatic labor leader and fundraiser who helped anoint a generation of future mayors, City Council members, state and federal legislators, judges, and governors.
Some of Dougherty’s key supporters in his clemency push, The Inquirer has learned, included two former Republican congressmen; Dougherty’s lawyer, who once ran as a Republican for mayor and, later, for U.S. Senate; and a onetime candidate for Philadelphia City Council with ties to organized labor, who said he was one of Trump’s earliest local backers.
All had relationships with Dougherty, owing to his years of political activism as head of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — even if his support mostly benefited fellow Democrats.
John Dougherty in 2015 with then-City Councilmember Jim Kenney. The two were childhood friends, and Dougherty helped support Kenney’s successful mayoral campaign.
The former Council candidate, Daniel Pellicciotti, said his efforts to help Dougherty included meeting with Trump at the White House and speaking with him over the phone. Pellicciotti said that he told Trump about the significant health challenges faced by Dougherty’s wife, Cecelia, and that Trump was sympathetic to Dougherty’s situation — and willing to send him home.
“He just said, ‘This is crazy.’ Exact words,” Pellicciotti said. “‘He needs to be home with his wife, taking care of her. Besides, it would be cheaper for the government.’”
Former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, meanwhile, said he signed a letter to Trump last year and contacted anyone he could “just to try to get this on the president’s radar.”
He said that he had been following Cecelia Dougherty’s health situation closely and that advocating for her husband “became a personal thing for me.” Earlier this year, he attended a court hearing in Reading at which Dougherty begged a judge to be released.
“I’m very thankful that the president had the compassion to put politics aside and do the right thing,” said Barletta, who met Dougherty in the early 2000s as mayor of Hazleton.
President Donald Trump with then-Rep. Lou Barletta in 2018.Keith Srakocic
And Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator who competed against Trump for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2016, said he “did what he could to be helpful” in supporting Dougherty’s efforts.
“Those two years Dougherty spent in jail away from his wife were probably 20 years because I know how much he loves her and how much he was really hurting,” Santorum said. “So to me, this was the humanitarian thing to do, and I supported it.”
The backing from GOP pols may help explain how Trump — a famously partisan president — ended up granting clemency to a longtime Democrat in one of America’s bluest cities. Trump was soundly defeated in Philadelphia in each of his three elections, and some of Dougherty’s longtime Democratic allies were among his fiercest critics.
The Republican lobbying might also add context to Dougherty’s decision to change his voter registration and join the GOP. Dougherty — long known as Johnny Doc — switched parties not long after being released this month from a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pa.
Dougherty has not spoken publicly since his release, and his lawyer, George Bochetto, said Dougherty was focused on caring for his wife.
Bochetto, who ran for Philadelphia mayor in 1999 and U.S. Senate in 2022 — both times as a Republican — generally declined to discuss details about the lobbying effort. He did say he had been in regular communication with White House aides about Cecelia Dougherty’s health challenges, and he called Trump’s decision “a magnificent gesture of compassion.”
The White House press office did not respond to questions about who was involved in advocating for Dougherty. A spokesperson said only that the commutation was granted to let him “care for [his] terminally ill wife.”
Multiple attempts at release
Dougherty and Bochetto had taken several paths to try to secure an early release from his six-year sentence, which began in 2024 after Dougherty was convicted in separate bribery and embezzlement trials.
A few months after Dougherty reported to prison, Bochetto filed emergency motions asking U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl to allow Dougherty to serve the remainder of his term on house arrest so he could be his wife’s primary caretaker.
Schmehl denied those requests twice — including after a hearing in May at which Dougherty testified about how he was the only person who could provide the type of round-the-clock assistance his wife needs. She has long been paralyzed and largely nonverbal after suffering a debilitating brain injury.
John Dougherty in 2024.Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer
After failing to persuade the judge, Dougherty turned to others in his orbit as the request pivoted toward the White House — where Trump, as president, has wide latitude to commute sentences and grant pardons in federal cases.
But his allies, including Pellicciotti, persisted. A former business agent for the laborers union, he said he was friends with Cecelia Dougherty before he knew her husband, and he has known both for decades.
A former Democrat and nephew of the late Councilmember Francis Rafferty, Pellicciotti ran unsuccessfully for Council in 2003 with backing from Dougherty’s electricians union. He said he switched his registration to Republican when Trump ran for president and backed his 2016 campaign.
“Nobody in Philly was really backing him. I have a lot of respect for him. He don’t forget his friends,” Pellicciotti said.
In addition to their politics, Pellicciotti, 64, of Roxborough, shared something else with Trump: a felony conviction. Pellicciotti pleaded guilty in 2005 to bribing a Philadelphia public official with cash in exchange for obtaining a designation for his demolition company as a woman-owned business.
When Pellicciotti was sentenced to probation and a fine the following year, Dougherty and other union members were in the courtroom to pat him on the back.
That experience with the criminal justice system did not come up in Pellicciotti’s conversations with Trump, however. “I really think it had strictly to do with him doing the right thing for John and Celi,” he said.
Help among friends
Barletta and Santorum declined to provide many details about the depths of their advocacy but agreed that their central motivation was support for Dougherty and his wife.
In addition to Dougherty’s long friendship with Barletta, his ties to Santorum date to 2006, when his former union, Local 98, backed Santorum’s unsuccessful reelection campaign against Democratic challenger Bob Casey.
Santorum said Dougherty was always uncharacteristically gracious about acts that benefited his members — despite the senator’s political affiliation.
“Johnny cared enough that he said, ‘Well, look, this guy has done more for my workers and those families than anybody, and we’re going to support him,’” Santorum said.
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum announcing his candidacy for the 2016 presidential race.KEITH SRAKOCIC / Associated Press
Other local figures with ties to Trump who were rumored to have helped Dougherty’s lobbying — such as Philadelphia lawyers Michael van der Veen and William J. Brennan, who represented Trump during his second impeachment trial — declined to say if they were involved.
In any case, Trump made Dougherty’s release official earlier this month. In addition to cutting his prison term short, the commutation erased Dougherty’s obligation to pay about $1.6 million in restitution.
Pellicciotti, for his part, was glad that Trump bestowed mercy on his longtime associate.
“All credit goes to God,” he said. “We did a lot of praying about it.”
Staff writers Gillian McGoldrick and Anna Orso contributed to this article.
Convicted former Philadelphia labor leader John Dougherty was released Friday afternoon from a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, his lawyer said, capping a surprise outcome that was the result of President Donald Trump’s decision to commute the remainder of Dougherty’s six-year prison term.
Dougherty’s lawyer, George Bochetto, said he was released around 3 p.m. Attempts to reach Dougherty for comment Friday were unsuccessful.
For much of the past year, Dougherty had been petitioning U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl to release him on house arrest so he could provide care for his gravely ill wife. But Schmehl had repeatedly denied those efforts.
Trump’s decision to commute Dougherty’s sentence instead will result in a more sweeping form of relief: His conviction will remain intact, but he will not be subject to any monitoring or house arrest, and he will no longer have to pay about $1.6 million in restitution to the union he was convicted of defrauding.
Bochetto called Trump’s decision “a magnificent gesture of compassion.” And he said it came after he’d been in regular communication with White House staff members about the dire and longstanding health challenges faced by Dougherty’s wife, Cecilia.
A White House official said Friday that those circumstances figured into Trump’s decision — particularly because Dougherty’s father-in-law, who had been serving as the primary caretaker, died last year.
Bochetto said there was “absolutely no reason” to keep Dougherty behind bars while his wife’s health was continuing to decline.
Dougherty, while testifying before Schmehl earlier this year, said he had done everything he could from prison to lift his wife’s spirits — mailing her letters, routinely calling her, and even singing to her over the phone.
But he said he was desperate to get home and help her manage a set of challenges that have left her paralyzed and largely nonverbal. He said his adult daughters and private aides were struggling to provide the type of intensive, round-the-clock care she requires.
“I just want to take care of Celia,” he said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office had opposed Dougherty’s efforts to be released. A spokesperson said the office had no comment on Trump’s decision to set Dougherty free.
Beyond caring for his wife, it was not immediately clear Friday what Dougherty’s future might hold — or whether he’d use his newfound freedom to try to return to the political stage.
Before he was prosecuted, Dougherty was a bona fide power broker while running Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which he turned into the biggest independent source of campaign money in Pennsylvania. That funding helped elect mayors, City Council members, and members of Congress. It also helped bolster the judicial candidacy of Dougherty’s brother, Kevin Dougherty, who won a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2015.
Even if John Dougherty did want to seek a return to the spotlight, it would have to come from a different perch.
Not only is Local 98 under new leadership, Dougherty’s convictions on counts of bribery and embezzlement make him ineligible to hold an elected union office for 13 years under U.S. Department of Labor laws.
Labor leader Ryan Boyer, who replaced Dougherty as chair of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, said he nonetheless expected Dougherty to end up back in the mix in some fashion.
“If I know John the way I know John,” he said, “he’s not going to sit on his hands.”
Staff writers Sean Collins Walsh and Maggie Prosser contributed to this article.
Convicted former Philadelphia labor leader John Dougherty will have his six-year prison term cut short after President Donald Trump agreed to sign a commutation ending the rest of Dougherty’s sentence, according to Dougherty’s lawyer.
George Bochetto said in an interview Thursday night he’s hopeful that Dougherty, the former city power broker known as Johnny Doc, could be freed from a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg as soon as Friday.
Bochetto called Trump’s decision “a magnificent gesture of compassion.” He said Trump had signed the commutation Thursday afternoon.
Records on the Office of Pardon Attorney’s website did not yet reflect a commutation approval as of Thursday night. And the White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump had denied Dougherty’s bid for a commutation earlier this year, according to that agency’s website. It was not immediately clear why circumstances changed this week.
For months, Dougherty had been petitioning U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl to be released on house arrest to provide care for his gravely ill wife. But Schmehl had repeatedly denied those efforts, saying in part that Dougherty had failed to demonstrate he was the only person who could serve as an adequate caretaker.
Prosecutors had opposed Dougherty’s request for similar reasons, and said the two years he spent behind bars of his six-year sentence was not enough time to merit release. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.
A commutation will keep Dougherty’s conviction intact, but allow him to return home to his wife, Cecilia, who Bochetto said was in “a desperate situation.” Bochetto said the act of clemency would also relieve Dougherty of having to pay about $1.6 million in restitution, and that Dougherty would not be subject to any monitoring or house arrest, saying Dougherty, upon release, would be “a free man.”
Presidents have broad authority to issue pardons and commutations in federal cases, and Trump has shown a willingness to grant them to political allies during his second term in office. But Bochetto said Trump, a Republican, was being particularly gracious in this instance by commuting the sentence of Dougherty, a longtime Democratic stalwart.
“Our criminal justice system needs to have some compassion,” Bochetto said. “There’s absolutely no reason to keep John Dougherty housed in a country club environment facility in Lewisburg when his wife so desperately needs him.”
Bochetto said he’d been in regular communication with White House staff members in seeking to free Dougherty, and that his arguments focused on the same issues he used in the bid to receive compassionate release from Schmehl: That Dougherty’s wife, who has long suffered from a debilitating brain injury, has seen her condition worsen significantly since her husband was imprisoned, and that he is the only person equipped to provide the care she needs.
Dougherty’s prosecution was one of the more significant local criminal cases in recent memory. For years, Dougherty had served as the head of his politically powerful union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. And from that perch, he was a certified political kingmaker — an organized labor leader with connections in City Hall and Harrisburg, and a man with the ability to raise funds or impart influence on a variety of issues across the state.
Earlier this year, while testifying before Schmehl, Dougherty revealed just how far away he was in prison from his life as a political power player: He told the judge that nearly all of his time now revolved around his wife, including sending her dozens of letters, using all of his allotted monthly phone minutes to call her, and singing her lullabies over the phone.
Ryan Boyer, who replaced Dougherty as chair of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, said he was happy for Dougherty.
“I don’t think that John should have been arrested for what he did,” Boyer said in an interview Thursday night. “It’s correcting an injustice, and he’ll be welcomed home by a lot of people in the Philadelphia building trades, as well as Philadelphia in general.”
Boyer said he expects Dougherty will be prohibited under the terms of his release from jumping back into labor and politics right away.
“With him having a commutation, I think there will be some prohibitions with him getting back involved with labor,” Boyer said.
But, he added, he doesn’t expect Dougherty to stay away forever.
“John has a sharp mind,” Boyer said. “If I know John the way I know John, he’s not going to sit on his hands.”
City Councilmember Jimmy Harrity said in an interview Thursday night he was happy Dougherty would be able to return home to take care of his wife.
“I’m just happy that he’s going to be able to take care of Celia. I’m just happy for his family,” Harrity said. “I never want to see anybody go to jail, but the bottom line is everybody must pay their dues back. He got in trouble, he went to jail, he did some time.”
As for whether Dougherty’s release would have an influence on Philly politics going forward, Harrity declined to say.
“Oh, I don’t even want to speculate on that,” he said. “I have no idea.”
While some labor leaders cheered the news of Dougherty’s release, one was notably less enthusiastic: Mark Lynch Jr., who succeeded Dougherty as business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98.
“We don’t spend our time focused on that,” Lynch said in a statement Thursday night, referring to Dougherty’s commutation. “Our focus is on the future of IBEW Local 98 and delivering results for our members.”
While Lynch often appears at news conferences and Local 98 is still politically influential, he has taken a more under-the-radar approach than his predecessor.
“Today, our members are working at essentially full employment,” Lynch said in his statement. “We have secured better health, dental and vision benefits while lowering costs to our members. We have negotiated some of the strongest wage increases in the country.”
Another change: Lynch has lowered the amount that electricians pay into the union’s political committee. Dougherty, on the other hand, was able to build Local 98 into a political powerhouse in no small part by convincing his members to increase their contributions.
“We are proud of the direction of the organization, and we intend to keep moving forward,” Lynch said.
Eleven years ago, Carlton Williams was, to some, a symbol of government dysfunction.
He was leading the troubled Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections, an agency engulfed in controversy over safety lapses and staffing issues following the deadly 2013 Market Street building collapse. The city controller called on Williams to resign, and Jim Kenney, then a candidate for mayor, promised that he’d get rid of him.
And yet Williams remained.
In July, he was named Philadelphia’s managing director, one of the most powerful positions in city government, second only to the mayor. He is assuming responsibility for L&I again, plus dozens of other agencies and thousands of employees who carry out the day-to-day operations that make the city run.
It is perhaps an improbable outcome for a longtime city employee who absorbed a level of scrutiny that could have easily ended his career.
But Williams proved durable, cycling through leadership positions across several departments while establishing himself as a City Hall insider. He has politically powerful allies and a reputation among City Council members as someone who will quickly act on their needs. That goes a long way with 17 politicians who value responsiveness and omnipresence, traits that they did not see in Williams’ predecessor, Adam K. Thiel.
Newly appointed Managing Director Carlton Williams interacts with city officials during a correctional officer graduation ceremony at FOP Lodge 5 in Philadelphia on Friday.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Perhaps most importantly for Williams’ ascent: he is all-in on Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.
The ties between Parker, 53, and Williams, 57, stretch back to their childhoods in Northwest Philly — he played football for the Oak Lane Wildcats, and she was a cheerleader. The team remains a part of both of their identities: Williams has led the Oak Lane Youth Association for 20 years, and the mayor often says proudly that she is a “Wildcat for life.”
Later in life, both found allies in the storied Northwest Coalition, a powerful political family. Williams said that he has known for 20 years that Parker would one day sit atop City Hall. And he most recently led Parker’s Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, overseeing the implementation of some of her key campaign promises.
“I’m bringing the ‘One Philly’ brand to the managing director’s office,” Williams said in an interview, echoing the mayor’s oft-used slogan. “Not to say it wasn’t being done under my predecessor. But I want to make sure it’s completely aligned with the mayor’s goals, because I believe in that vision.”
New Philadelphia Managing Director Carlton Williams speaks at the podium after being announced by Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker during a July 28 news conference at City Hall.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
His appointment as managing director marks a new stage for the Parker administration that has seen significant turnover at its highest levels. And it is indicative of what Parker values in her inner circle: vast institutional knowledge and loyalty.
For the mayor, trust in Williams’ ability to operate within the bureaucracy and advance her priorities may outweigh his mixed record of management.
“Whenever we had a crisis of any kind in this city, he has been on my speed dial,” Parker said when she announced Williams’ appointment last month. “No matter who’s been leading, I’ve always called him for his counsel.”
Overseeing ‘a very broken’ L&I
Parker’s bet on Williams would have seemed almost unimaginable a decade ago.
A year after Williams was appointed to lead L&I, an excavator demolishing a wall on Market Street in Center City toppled the building onto an adjacent Salvation Army store, killing six people and injuring a dozen more. The inspector responsible for the demolition project died by suicide a week later.
Calls for reform abounded and questions swirled about whether the city’s agencies were responsible. There were multiple investigations launched and commissions convened to probe the disaster, and within days, Council members were pressing Williams to institute reforms that would bolster safety on private construction sites.
In response, Williams sought to hire more inspectors, increase their training, raise demolition standards, and create new specialized units within L&I.
Today, he says the collapse on Market Street was “one of the saddest moments” of his time in government.
“You have to lead through some tough challenges when you’re a leader,” he said. “You don’t get to pick and choose when you lead.”
In this June 2013 file photo, then-Philadelphia Commissioner of the Department of Licenses and Inspections Carlton Williams (second from right) waits in line to attend a memorial service for Anne Bryan, who was among the victims of the Market Street building collapse.JOSEPH KACZMAREK / Associated Press
By fall 2015, then-City Controller Alan Butkovitz was calling on Williams to be fired. He said at the time that L&I had long been troubled, but that his office’s audit of the agency found that Williams had not made enough improvements.
In this 2013 photo, then-Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison (left) and then-Commissioner of Licenses and Inspections Carlton Williams listen to members of City Council during a hearing.TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer
Butkovitz now says that he blames former Mayor Michael Nutter instead, and that Williams was “caught between the mayor and me.” He said Williams had promised to provide the controller’s office with documents to assist in an audit, and then did not.
“I took it out on Carlton Williams at the time,” Butkovitz said.“His inclination was to cooperate with me, but at the time, it looked to me like duplicity. And I don’t think it was. I think he was overridden by higher authority.”
Nutter did not respond to a request for comment.
Estelle Richman, a former Philadelphia managing director who has held a variety of roles in local, state and federal government, said L&I is “one of the most difficult city departments.” She noted that past agency leaders have been pushed out, fired, indicted, and jailed.
“We can go back and say ‘maybe [Williams] should have done this or that,’ but the reality is it was a very broken department,” she said. “I think he did more to try to get it restabilized and back on track than any other commissioner at that time could have done.”
‘You have to be accessible’
Before taking the helm at L&I, Williams was a career bureaucrat.
Born in North Philly and raised in West Oak Lane, Williams started with the city at age 19, working in Fairmount Park as one of the first-ever members of the Philadelphia Ranger Corps. The program paid for part of his tuition to attend Temple University and marked his foray into public service.
Jeffrey Montague, who led the Philadelphia Ranger Corp. and has been a mentor to Williams for decades, said that at a young age, Williams showed potential.
“He didn’t try to fit in. He always stood out on his own independence,” Montague said. “He wasn’t trying to fit into a crowd.”
After working as a ranger, Williams spent three years running a Harrisburg youth program for AmeriCorps — the first and last time Williams lived outside the city.
He returned to Philadelphia to work for the Parks and Recreation Department, rising to become a deputy commissioner in both the recreation and streets departments.
Then came the four-year stint leading L&I, and when Kenney took office in 2016, he moved Williams back to his old job as a deputy in the streets and sanitation department.
But it didn’t last. Five months after Kenney took office, the streets commissioner was arrested for assault. Williams ascended to the role, and suddenly, the person who Kenney said he wouldn’t retain to lead L&I was in charge of one of Philadelphia’s most visible departments, overseeing transportation and sanitation operations citywide.
Carlton Williams, then the director of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, speaks during a news conference at Bigler and South 15th Streets on July 7, 2025.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
It was there where Williams solidified himself as a City Hall fixture. He said that as an administration staffer,he has “one primary that I listen to” — the mayor — but he has always tried to be attentive to Council.
That may be a key difference between Williams and Thiel, his predecessor. Thiel was the former fire commissioner and a nationally recognized expert in emergency management who was seen as a skilled behind-the-scenes operator.
But Council members said thatThiel did not foster close relationships with members of the city’s legislative body who are often conduits between residents and the mayor’s administration.
In addition, Thiel was often absent during major events in the city and he was frequently on leave — he joined the Army Reserve eight months into his tenure, and held several jobs outside city government, including as a consultant and professor.
That was a departure from prior administrations, when the managing director was often the public face of city operations.
On several occasions during the Parker administration, it was Williams who was in the spotlight. As director of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, he played a key coordinating role during the eight-day municipal worker strike that halted city services — most visibly, trash pickup.
And he oversaw the city’s response to a severe winter storm earlier this year that left much of the city encased in ice, despite weather emergencies typically falling under the managing director’s purview.
New Philadelphia Managing Director Carlton Williams (left) stands near the former director, Adam Thiel, before an introduction by Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker during a July 28 news conference at City Hall.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
City Councilmember Anthony Phillips, whose district includes Northwest Philadelphia, said that prior to Thiel’s resignation, members of Council were “gravely concerned” about his frequent leave.Some members said that, in Thiel’s absence, Williams was their primary contact among Parker’s top staff.
“You can’t get certain things done and you can’t expect an efficient and effective city when you’re not present,” Phillips said. “Carlton is going to be the complete opposite of that.”
Williams said that his role as managing director is his only job aside from volunteering.
“It’s a full-time, 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job,” he said. “You have to be accessible.”
Williams’ coziness with elected officials has also drawn criticism.
A former city employee who previously worked for Williams said his relationships with Council amount to a “favor machine.” The staffer spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to preserve relationships.
“There is this cycle of Council getting calls from constituents, like ‘there’s a pothole,’ and then they get it fixed, and that’s the main work,” the former staffer said. “It’s not actually setting up systems that are solving the problems. It’s reacting to them.”
But Williams said some of his proudest achievements have resulted in systemic change: he led the installation of some of the first spraygrounds in the city, overhauled the recycling program, had BigBelly trash cans placed throughout Philadelphia, and started the annual Philly Spring Cleanup.
“He is probably one of the most well-prepared managing directors that the city has had,” Richman said. “He knows not only how operations work within the city departments, he knows the political structure of the city. And I believe a managing director has to know both.”
John Dougherty, the former leader of the politically powerful Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and his ally, ex-Councilmember Bobby Henon, were on trial for bribery and other corruption charges. Prosecutors accused Henon of taking official actions as a Council member at Dougherty’s behest in exchange for a salaried, no-show job with the union.
One of the schemes prosecutors presented during the trial focused on efforts by union officials in 2015 to halt the installation of an MRI machine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a project that was being completed with nonunion labor. Williams, at the time, was at the helm of L&I.
Department of Streets Commissioner Carlton Williams exits federal court on Oct. 12, 2021, after testifying in the John Dougherty and Bobby Henon bribery trial.Thomas Hengge / Staff Photographer
During the 2021 trial, Williams was called to testify. He told the jury that Henon called him in August 2015 to report that an unlicensed contractor was working at CHOP, and that he dispatched an inspector to investigate.
The inspector, Williams testified, issued a stop-work order on the construction of the MRI machine. But he insisted that he did not direct the inspector to do so, and told the jury that responding to complaints from Council members was a routine part of his job.
Ultimately, L&I reversed the stop-work order, and the MRI machine was built.
Prosecutors said Dougherty paid Henon to be his “man on the inside” in City Hall and used the episode at CHOP to establish evidence of a corrupt agreement between the two.
“You heard what happened,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Costello told the jury during closing arguments. “Henon contacted Carlton Williams, Carlton Williams sent inspectors out and they issued orders — they issued orders to shut the job down.”
But defense attorneys said one public official asking another to take action doesn’t constitute a crime.
“Carlton Williams was the recipient of information just passed on to him about the MRI and the unlicensed contractor,” said defense attorney Brian McMonagle. “That ain’t a crime.”
During the 2023 mayoral campaign, when a half-dozen Democrats could have plausibly won the party’s nomination, Williams nearly left the city.
He said he got a job as the public works director in San Francisco, but before he accepted, Parker won the primary election. Williams decided to stay.
“I wanted to work for Cherelle Parker,” he said. “I believed in her vision.”
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is applauded by members of her administration at City Hall on July 9, 2025, hours after reaching a tentative contract agreement with District Council 33 leaders overnight, ending the workers’ strike. At left is Carlton Williams, director of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives. Chief Deputy Mayor Sinceré Harris is behind the mayor at right.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Parker took office in 2024 and created a new role: director of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives. Williams would carry out her campaign promise to rid the city of its “Filthadelphia” moniker by implementing twice-weekly trash collection, an expansion of illegal dumping enforcement, and a biannual citywide program to clean every block.
As managing director, Williams’ portfolio will grow substantially. He will be responsible for the city’s response to public health and homelessness, as well as overseeing large agencies like the fire department and the prisons.
He will also coordinate the city’s strategies in Kensington, the beleaguered neighborhood and the site of an open-air drug market that the Parker administration has spent more than two years working to shut down. Williams said there is inherent pressure that comes with being responsible for addressing such long-entrenched issues.
“But I work best under pressure, and so I take that as a badge of honor,” he said.
Williams said he intends to prioritize communication with residents because they “understand that everything can’t get fixed at one time.”
“But at least we can say what needs to be done, when it’s going to [be] fixed, what’s the timeline,” he said. “I manage through the eyes of everyday citizens. I want what they want.”
Convicted former Philadelphia labor leader John Dougherty will remain in prison after a federal judge again denied Dougherty’s request to be released on house arrest to provide care for his gravely ill wife.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl wrote in a memorandum filed Thursday that Dougherty and his lawyers had failed to demonstrate that he was the only person who could provide adequate care for his wife, Cecelia, who for years has suffered from a debilitating brain injury.
In addition, Schmehl wrote, Dougherty did not sufficiently specify when a trust fund established to support his wife’s care would run out of money. Those factors, coupled with the “minimal amount of time” Dougherty has served in his six-year sentence, Schmehl wrote, “do not weigh sufficiently in favor of relief.”
The decision was a blow to Dougherty, 66, who for months has been contending in court documents and in testimony before Schmehl that his wife’s condition has significantly worsened while he has been imprisoned, and that if he is not released to care for her, she will likely die.
Dougherty’s attorney, George Bochetto, said in an interview Thursday that he was “deeply, gravely disappointed” by the ruling, and that he disagreed they had not shown the acute nature of the emergency that should qualify Dougherty for release.
“I thought the evidentiary hearing we had in front of Judge Schmehl was extraordinary, and it left no doubt in anybody’s mind” about the merits of Dougherty’s petition, Bochetto said.
The ruling followed another rejection in Dougherty’s ongoing bid for freedom. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump denied Dougherty’s request for a commutation, a legal avenue that could have cut Dougherty’s prison term short.
Schmehl, in his memorandum, did say that Dougherty could file a renewed motion in the future, “should the facts materially change.”
Bochetto said he would not wait that long. He was already working on his notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, he said, and he intended to ask the court to consider the case on an emergency basis.
“This is why God invented appellate courts,” Bochetto said.
Dougherty was sentenced in 2024 to six years in prison after being convicted in separate bribery and embezzlement trials that centered on actions he took while serving as the head of his politically powerful union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
But last year, Dougherty — known colloquially as Johnny Doc — filed emergency motions asking Schmehl to allow him to serve the remainder of his prison term on house arrest so he could be his wife’s primary caregiver.
In his first request, filed in the summer, Dougherty said that the trust fund established to pay for her care was about to run out of money, and that his daughters and other relatives were unable to provide the kind of around-the-clock assistance she needed.
Then, in December, he filed another motion, saying the situation had become more dire after the death of his father-in-law, who had been serving as the primary caregiver in his absence.
Prosecutors opposed Dougherty’s requests, saying that although they were sympathetic to his wife’s plight, they did not believe he had served enough of his sentence to merit release.
And in January, Schmehl denied Dougherty’s request, writing that he, too, recognized the significant health challenges, but that they did “not outweigh, at this point in time, the need for punishment that has been adjudged.”
Bochetto appealed that ruling. And in May, Schmehl held an evidentiary hearing to learn more.
At the hearing, Dougherty took the stand for more than an hour, and occasionally choked back tears as he described his wife’s myriad complications and detailed the efforts he had made in prison to help her, including by sending her dozens of letters and using all of his allotted monthly phone minutes to call her.
But prosecutors argued that Dougherty and his relatives had not sufficiently looked into alternative care arrangements that might be covered by Medicaid or other insurance. And they said that while many families across the country could benefit from having an incarcerated defendant released to help care for their relatives, Dougherty had not shown that he was the only person who could do so for his wife.
Schmehl, in his order, said that Dougherty’s wife is being cared for by private nurses and her two daughters, and that “neither party suggests that her current care is inadequate.” Beyond that, the judge said, Dougherty did not sufficiently specify when her trust fund would run out of money and did not adequately explain what would happen once it did.
The ruling will leave Dougherty, for now, to serve out the remainder of his term, which he is serving at a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa. His projected release date is in June 2029, according to the Bureau of Prisons website.
Convicted former Philadelphia labor leader John J. Dougherty has taken a variety of steps to try to cut his six-year prison term short, including by taking the witness stand this spring to tell a federal judge about the unique health challenges faced by his wife.
But one other avenue he pursued last year — an appeal to the White House for mercy — apparently hit a dead end.
President Donald Trump earlier this month denied Dougherty’s request for a commutation, according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s website, meaning Trump — at least for now — will not use his broad powers of clemency to clear the way for Dougherty’s early release.
Dougherty — who, nicknamed Johnny Doc, was once a singular power broker in the city’s Democratic Party — was one of about 5,600 people whose commutation applications were denied on July 10, according to the pardon attorney’s site. A commutation keeps a defendant’s conviction intact but ends or reduces their sentence.
Trump, a Republican, also denied about 300 applications for a pardon, a broader form of relief that is added to the record of the case and reverses any restrictions stemming from a conviction, such as limitations on voting or seeking public office. The New York Times first reported on the wave of denials this week.
Presidents have broad authority to issue pardons and commutations in federal cases, and Trump has shown a willingness to grant them to political allies during his second term in office.
One of his first actions after being sworn in again last year was to issue pardons to nearly every person charged with participating in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has also bestowed clemency on political figures convicted of corruption and those he maintains were “persecuted” by the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden.
Dougherty’s attorney, George Bochetto, said Tuesday that he was not involved in the effort to petition for a commutation and did not know about it. It was not immediately clear if Dougherty submitted an application himself or if he had another associate help with its preparation.
The pardon attorney’s website made basic information about Dougherty’s application available through its case search system, showing Dougherty’s name and his Bureau of Prisons register number and saying his application was filed last year.
Bochetto has been overseeing a different relief effort: Dougherty’s attempt to have a judge grant him compassionate release.
In court documents and in testimony before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl, Dougherty has been saying for months that his wife, Cecilia — who has long suffered from a debilitating brain injury — has seen her condition worsen while he has been imprisoned. Dougherty has asked to serve the rest of his sentence on house arrest in order to oversee her care, saying if he is not allowed to do so, his wife will likely die.
Schmehl denied that request earlier this year, but has been reconsidering after Bochetto appealed.
