Johnny Doc said his gravely ill wife is ‘entirely alone’ and without a caretaker as he again seeks to be released from prison

Convicted former labor leader John J. Dougherty is again asking a federal judge to cut short his six-year prison term, this time because he says the recent death of his father-in-law has left his gravely ill wife without a caregiver.

Dougherty made the request in a brief filed last month with U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl, writing that his wife, Cecilia — who for years has suffered from a debilitating brain injury — has been left “entirely alone and without any capable caregiver” since her father died from pancreatic cancer on Nov. 10.

Dougherty has previously argued that he should be granted compassionate release and allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence on house arrest to oversee his wife’s care — a request federal prosecutors have opposed.

In the latest request, Dougherty’s attorney, George Bochetto, wrote that Dougherty’s father-in-law, Joseph Conroy, had been serving as Cecilia Dougherty’s primary caregiver despite his own poor health and that Conroy’s death is “precisely the type of development” that warrants a change to Dougherty’s sentence.

Dougherty, Bochetto wrote, “remains the only person able and willing to provide his wife’s necessary care. No one besides Mr. Dougherty can fill the detrimental need that Mrs. Dougherty requires for survival.”

Federal prosecutors, however, said that Dougherty had previously asserted that Conroy was incapable of serving as Cecilia’s primary caretaker and that his newest motion for relief “directly contradicts” the representations he made in the last one.

“In short, the unfortunate passing of Mr. Conroy has no bearing at all on the circumstances,” prosecutors wrote in a reply brief filed last week.

Dougherty, 65, was once one of the state’s most powerful political figures, serving as the charismatic leader of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers with a wide range of connections in City Hall and Harrisburg.

But last year, he was sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted in separate bribery and embezzlement trials — the first in 2021, after a jury found that he had spent years bribing former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon, the second in December 2023 over nearly $600,000 he and others embezzled from the union. He reported to prison last fall.

Henon was convicted alongside Dougherty and sentenced to 3½ years behind bars but was transferred to a halfway house earlier this year. He later secured a job working as a Local 98 electrician.

Dougherty’s latest request for relief came several months after he first asked Schmehl for compassionate release.

In August, Bochetto filed an emergency brief saying that a trust fund established to pay for Cecilia Dougherty’s care was about to run out of money and that the couple’s adult daughters were not equipped to serve as permanent caregivers.

It also said Conroy, “once a limited source of support, is now medically incapacitated and permanently unable to contribute to her care in any way.”

Beyond detailing issues around the health of Dougherty’s wife, that filing said that Dougherty had also effectively run out of money and assets since he began serving his sentence at a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg and that he’d suffered from several new health issues while behind bars, including a chronic foot infection that made it hard for him to walk.

Prosecutors at the time wrote that they were sympathetic to the plight of Dougherty’s wife but that his absence from her life “does not distinguish this case from that of countless defendants whose loved ones suffer as a result of their crimes.”

It was not immediately clear when Schmehl might rule on Dougherty’s requested relief, or if he might take any additional action — such as scheduling a hearing — before doing so.