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Daniel Dougherty of Philadelphia has suffered many bad events in his life. He’s a former auto mechanic with alcohol addiction problems. He has had two broken marriages. But two of the tragedies stand out from the rest. In 1985, his girlfriend’s house burned down, killing his two sons who were asleep upstairs. In 1999, his second ex-wife was involved in a nasty child custody dispute with him. She reported to police that Dougherty set the 1985 fire which killed his children. She reportedly later retracted her claims, but it wasn’t enough to save Dougherty from a miserable fate.

The wheels of law enforcement whirred, people “changed” (falsified) their testimony to match the new story, and 14 years after that tragic fire, Dougherty was arrested. In his trial in 2000, he was sentenced to death for what appears could be a false allegation made by a nasty woman who couldn’t accept sharing child custody and was perhaps willing to see her ex-husband dead rather than accept joint custody.
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Not even a 7 year old child is safe from law enforcement persecution. At least that’s the case when you have Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, involved and Judge Mark Ciavarella was on the case. You may remember him from the $2.6 million (revised estimates are now pegging it at $2.8 million!) “kids for cash” rule of cruel and illegal injustice by him and his buddy in crime Michael Conahan.

Here’s another story from about four years before the discovery of the thousands of cases of judicial corruption that justify the death penalty for Ciavarella. In this one, cops bribed a 7 year old boy with candy and pizza to get a confession for a fire he couldn’t have possibly set. Further, the victim of the fire, elderly Mr. Benjamin Morris, was known to burn yard waste and debris in his backyard and may have started the fire himself.

Luzerne County “law enforcement” didn’t bother to question anybody who was taking care of the boy that fateful day. Why bother when you are criminal thugs with badges who already have somebody you can easily blame for a crime and can be cheaply made to self-incriminate?

Can’t Punish Dead Man, So Punish Little Boy

Dead Benjamin Morris of course couldn’t be punished for the fire, so the government targeted a 7 year old boy instead. They wanted another arrest and conviction on their score cards, and since building the case for the prosecution could be paid for largely via twenty bucks of candy and pizza, it was a a cheap and easy “win-win-win” for the police, prosecutor, and corrupt judge. Ciavarella ripped him away from his family and sent him away for “treatment” for a “crime” that not only was probably not committed by him but was quite possibly an accident caused by the dead victim. That these wrongful actions by the government harmed a little boy and his family does not matter to the corrupt officials of Luzerne County.
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