Now that's courtroom drama

JOSEPH DOUGHERTY, the 73-year-old former labor leader awaiting sentencing next week on a federal racketeering conviction, just found out the hard way that not even Shakespeare can soften the blow of a judge's gavel.

U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson yesterday rejected Dougherty's Hail Mary motion for an acquittal or a new trial.

Baylson began the ruling thusly: "Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh, And sees fast by a butcher with an axe, But will suspect 'twas he that made the slaughter?" - Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II, Act III, Scene 2.

Yo, judge. You're talking to a former union boss, here. He was convicted of presiding over a criminal enterprise of "goon squads" - not a classroom full of English students.

Baylson cited the passage from Henry VI to explain how circumstantial evidence can nonetheless be convincing.

"Shakespeare's prescient verse encapsulates the role of circumstantial evidence as a basis of criminal responsibility," he wrote.

Something tells us that Dougherty, ex-business manager of Local 401 of the Ironworkers Union, would've been OK with a simple yes or no - or, if you insist, yea or nay - on his last-ditch appeal.

Or perhaps Portia's famous quote from The Merchant of Venice: "The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."

Unfortunately, the federal prosecutors on the case think otherwise. They're asking the judge to tack at least seven years onto his 15-year sentence.

Some better news for Jodi Lobel and Deb Watson-Stokes, the prosecutors who left their jobs at the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office to run for Common Pleas Judge in the May Democratic primary.

They didn't win. But they did get their jobs back.

"Both were phenomenal public servants," said Cameron Kline, spokesman for District Attorney Seth Williams.

Kline said Williams "welcomed them back," but that their resignations and rehirings were not part of "any prior arrangement."

Seth, what a guy. Must've read The Merchant of Venice.

Lobel is already back and will be handling IT and special projects. Watson-Stokes will resume prosecuting homicide cases, but isn't back in the office yet, Kline said.

Regardless, we applaud these women for life-hacking the "resign to run" clause in the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, which requires city employees to quit their jobs when seeking elective office.

Maybe it should be renamed "Take an Unpaid Vacation to Run."

The Republican City Committee has been sending emails our way on behalf of Ross Feinberg, the Republican running for Register of Wills.

Feinberg wants to replace Ron Donatucci, who's held that office for 31 years.

"I find it appalling that, as a resident of Philadelphia, a taxpayer and the Republican Candidate for Philadelphia's Register of Wills that Ronald Donatucci, the long-sitting incumbent, embraces the use of his City Hall throne to filter his blatant use of patronage right through the Register's office," Feinberg wrote in one email, in response to an editorial about Donatucci that ran in the Inquirer . . . in 2011.

A second email - titled "Register of Wills II" - riffed on similar themes, citing, in its entirety, a 1994 Inquirer article that delved into Donatucci's patronage power, and the real estate and plumbing businesses he maintained on the side.

If this was a Hollywood film franchise, we'd be looking forward to "Register of Wills III: This Time It's Personal," followed by a subpar fourth installment, "Ultimate Register of Wills," and then the inevitable reboot, "Dawn of Register of Wills."

- Staff writers William Bender,

David Gambacorta and Julie Shaw contributed to this report.

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