Daniel Dougherty’s fate in a jury’s hands for 3rd time in 1985 fire that killed his 2 young sons
Dougherty, 59, has stood trial three times for the fatal fire in his Oxford Circle rowhouse, charged with two counts of second-degree murder and arson causing death.
For the third time in nearly 20 years, Daniel Dougherty is counting on a jury to set him free.
Dougherty, 59, has had a trilogy of trials, seeking vindication of his claim that he did not set the 1985 fire in his Oxford Circle rowhouse that killed his two young sons.
The latest jury began deliberations early Friday, the culmination of a nearly two-week trial to determine whether Dougherty is guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and arson causing death.
A late-afternoon fire drill at the Stout Center for Criminal Justice disrupted deliberations, and the jury will return Monday morning.
As in the two previous trials — which found Dougherty guilty before those convictions were overturned by Superior Court — significant weight is placed on where the fires originated and on Dougherty’s own words.
The prosecution’s narrative centers on Dougherty as a jilted lover who set the house on fire as a vengeful act toward two women: his girlfriend, Kathleen Schuler, the homeowner; and Kathleen Dippel, his ex-wife and the mother of his boys. He allegedly set three fires in the house and left his sons to die in their upstairs bedroom, said prosecutors, who emphasized that “accidental” fires don’t come in threes.
As proof, they pointed to testimony from Dougherty himself, who took the stand in his first trial and admitted to feeling responsible for his children’s deaths: not because he lit the fires, but because of his reaction. When he awoke on the living room couch, surrounded by flames, he said, he instinctively ran out of the house to grab a garden hose instead of running upstairs to rescue his sons.
Dougherty’s defense, led by his longtime attorney, David S. Fryman, contends that no one saw Dougherty light a match or heard him discuss a plan to burn the house down, or saw him act in an unloving manner toward his children. And the fire didn’t start in three places, the defense maintains, but was caused by “flashover,” a condition that can mimic arson.
Dougherty, whose graying hair is pulled into a stringy knot behind his head, has called the case against him “bull” and has asked Judge J. Scott O’Keefe to dismiss all charges with prejudice.
Dougherty has maintained his innocence since the night of Aug. 15, 1985, when a fire destroyed the home where he lived with his girlfriend, her young son, and his two boys, 3-year-old John and 4-year-old Daniel Jr.
He was charged 14 years later with starting the fire and killing his sons, and in 2000 was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. In 2012, his sentence was reduced to life in prison, and in 2014 an appeals court ordered a new trial, both changes attributed to the ineffectiveness of his original defense attorney to challenge the fire science presented against Dougherty.
At the second trial, the judge allowed introduction of testimony from the first trial by a city fire investigator who was unable to testify at the retrial, which the appeals court said violated Dougherty’s right to face his accusers. The court also took exception to the introduction of a graphic photograph of the two children pictured dead on a bed, which it said added “no additional evidentiary value.” The court also listed as a reason for overturning the conviction in the second trial the allowance of testimony that Dougherty was a drunk who hit women, behavior it said was not tied to the homicide and arson charges.