Closing arguments in John Dougherty’s union embezzlement trial set for next week as prosecution and defense rest

After 33 witnesses and 15 days of testimony, the union embezzlement case against former labor leader John Dougherty drew closer to its conclusion Thursday, as both sides announced they were done presenting evidence in the case.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl dismissed the jury of seven women and five men for the week, instructing them to return Monday to hear closing arguments and begin their deliberations next week.

That hasty conclusion came after Dougherty, the longtime business manager of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and his codefendant — Brian Burrows, the union’s former president — advised the court that they’d chosen not to address jurors directly by testifying themselves.

For his part, Dougherty opted not to put on a defense case at all — hoping that defense lawyers Greg Pagano and Henry M. George had poked enough holes in the government’s case earlier in the proceedings to secure an acquittal. Any union money that their client might have spent on himself, they’ve said throughout the trial, was a mistake, not a crime.

But prosecutors appeared equally confident as they wrapped up their evidence with brief testimony Wednesday from the FBI’s lead investigator on the case.

Over four weeks, government lawyers have painted Dougherty as a flagrant thief who, along with Burrows and others, embezzled more than $600,000 from Local 98′s coffers between 2010 and 2016.

With witness after witness, they sought to show that even as Dougherty held himself out as the region’s fiercest champion for organized labor, he was routinely fleecing the union electricians whom he’d been elected to represent.

Receipt by receipt, invoice by invoice, they itemized dozens of expenses for home renovations, pricey dinners and mundane purchases on groceries and other goods enjoyed by Dougherty, his family members, and friends.

All of it, prosecutors consistently said, was paid for with union money.

FBI Special Agent Jason Blake wrapped up that exhaustive accounting Thursday with one last stint on the witness stand, during which he told jurors that in May 2016 Dougherty had spent $80 of Local 98′s money to have a cookie tray sent to the christening of his nephew’s baby — an expense that was later justified as for the “good of the union.”

Exasperated, Burrows’ lawyer Thomas Bergstrom balked at the notion that Blake was now describing that goodwill gesture as a federal crime. The nephew, George Fiocca, had worked at a charter school affiliated with Local 98 for years.

Blake, however, remained unmoved.

“It’s something that should have been paid for personally,” the agent said, “not with union funds.”

» READ MORE: As it happened: Prosecution and defense rest in John Dougherty embezzlement trial; jury to get case next week

That wasn’t the only benefit Fiocca received from Local 98, Blake said. In 2015, the union cut him a $7,500 check for consulting work that prosecutors say he never did. Blake testified Thursday that Dougherty arranged to send his nephew the money as a gift after the purchase of his first house.

But lawyers for the ex-union chief maintained the FBI had never interviewed Fiocca and couldn’t accurately say whether he’d rightfully earned that money or not.

The same was true, the defense said, for another Dougherty nephew who took home regular union paychecks while working for Local 98 part time in the summers while he was attending college.

As Blake described it, though, that nephew — Sean Dougherty, son of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty — was paid, at his uncle’s direction, more than $9,600 for weeks of work when he was either on vacation or attending classes at Chestnut Hill College.

While prosecutors say it was Dougherty who arranged both those payments to his nephews, Burrows, too, is charged with the alleged crimes as he was the Local 98 official who signed off on payroll checks.

But when defense lawyers got their chance to put on evidence later in the day, they opted to attack another aspect of the case entirely — a series of renovations that prosecutors say Burrows had done at his Mount Laurel home on Local 98′s dime.

» READ MORE: ‘You are still a liar’: Defense attacks key government witness in John Dougherty’s embezzlement trial

Earlier in the trial, contractor Anthony Massa testified that he oversaw more than $48,000 worth of improvement work at the former union president’s house between 2010 and 2016, including a complete bathroom overhaul, air-conditioning repairs, and the installation of a new walk-in closet and an outdoor fence.

Massa told the jury Burrows instructed him to bill all of it to the union.

Yet the lone defense witness called to testify Thursday took credit for some of the work Massa had said he did.

Robert Burrows, the brother of the ex-union president, told the jury that as union tradesmen, he, his sibling, and their father often undertook complicated home repair jobs themselves.

He said he believed Brian Burrows and his father had done some of the electrical work in the Mount Laurel home’s attic that Massa said he had done.

Prosecutors, however, challenged the union president’s brother, asking how he knew that to be the case.

Well, Robert Burrows replied, “I don’t think the elves did it.”