Longtime Chicago civic leader Jay Doherty says he spent a career as a “glad-hander,” building relationships between people and trying to see what he could do for others.
But eventually, he realized he was “not being honorable.” The ex-president of the City Club of Chicago told a federal judge Tuesday that, “instead of seeing my job as a means of service, it became simply a way to make more money and build myself up — to gain, not give.”
He admitted he’d done wrong. But it came on the brink of sentencing. And moments later, U.S. District Judge Manish Shah gave him a year in prison for his role in a lengthy plot designed to illegally influence then-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan for ComEd.
“What I see are serious crimes committed by an insider who knew better, could have prevented it and could have helped remedy it,” Shah said while handing down the sentence.
And, he added, Doherty’s concession came “too late in the process.”
The hearing at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse largely brought to a close the long-running ComEd legal saga — at least at the lower-court level. Doherty, 71, was among four political insiders convicted in May 2023 for the ComEd conspiracy. He’s now the last to be sentenced.
In a statement after the hearing, Doherty attorney Gabrielle Sansonetti said she and her co-counsel “appreciate that the court issued the lowest sentence for Jay” among the four.
But Sansonetti pointed to a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prompted Shah earlier this year to toss bribery convictions in the case. She wrote that, if Doherty had gone to trial on the law as it now stands, “he never would have been sentenced at all.”
“The criminal justice system works best when there is a clear and immovable line between legal and illegal conduct,” she said.
Shah in recent weeks gave a pair of two-year prison sentences to longtime Madigan loyalist Michael McClain and ex-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, and he gave an 18-month prison sentence to former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker.
Madigan was convicted separately for his role in the conspiracy, and he’s been sentenced to 7 ½ years in prison.
But a new fight is also brewing in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Madigan and Pramaggiore have enlisted legal heavyweights to fight their convictions. McClain is also expected to appeal. Hooker’s deadline to appeal has passed.
Former ComEd executive Fidel Marquez, who wore a wire for the FBI, still faces sentencing. Prosecutors are expected to seek probation in exchange for his help in the investigation, though.
The conspiracy revolved around $1.3 million paid by ComEd to five Madigan allies over eight years to curry favor with the longtime leader of the state’s House of Representatives. The recipients hardly did any work for the money, which ComEd paid through intermediaries.
Nearly $1 million of it moved through Doherty’s consulting firm. During the sentencing hearing Tuesday, Shah told Doherty “you and your company were the metaphoric cash in an envelope, that amounted to bribes.”
Sansonetti pointed during the hearing to what she called a “gaping hole” in the case — the fact that Doherty had no involvement in ComEd’s key legislation. She insisted that Doherty has already lost his family, his business and his reputation as a result of his prosecution.
She asked Shah to consider that Doherty “has suffered, greatly, as a result of this case,” and to take note of his charitable works with Misericordia and Special Olympics.
When it was his turn to speak, Doherty admitted he’d done three things wrong. He said he didn’t try to find out what work the Madigan allies were expected to do, he didn’t check to see if they were doing it, and he “deluded” himself into thinking it wasn’t his responsibility.
Shah acknowledged that such a “measure of responsibility and accountability” is important. But he agreed that it was Doherty’s own decisions that brought him before the bench.
The judge at one point insisted that Doherty’s own words and facial expressions, captured on a hidden FBI camera, gave him away. The camera was worn by Marquez, who came asking Doherty about the arrangement with Madigan’s allies early in 2019.
“The pause and expression on Mr. Doherty’s face when asked by Mr. Marquez what they did and what he had them doing, that is what communicated his — Mr. Doherty’s — knowledge that these were not real subcontractors,” Shah said. “He knew they were there to benefit ComEd’s position with Mr. Madigan in Springfield.”
The judge said Doherty played a “criminal game” behind the scenes. One that “undermines all that the soft power of persuasion, organization, debate is meant to achieve — how civic lawful democracy is supposed to work.”
“You cheated the very thing that you put a face to at the City Club of Chicago,” Shah said, “that your charitable works represent.”