Brentwood drops Vojtas appeal

Web Extras: Marketplace, Bridal, Headlines by Email, Postcards

Brentwood drops Vojtas appeal

Will pay his fiancee's heirs in wrongful-death verdict

Saturday, February 10, 2001

By Bruce Keidan, Post-Gazette Correspondent At Large

Correction/Clarification: (Published Feb. 13, 2001) Vince Reda operated a video poker business in Brookline. A story in Saturday's editions on Brentwood's decision not to appeal a jury award against one of its police officers said incorrectly the business was located in Brentwood.

The Borough of Brentwood has dropped its appeal of a wrongful-death verdict against its best-known police officer, agreeing to pay Judith Barrett's heirs roughly half of the $215,000 a federal civil jury originally ruled they were owed.

Barrett died of a gunshot wound to the head in a Brentwood bus shelter on June 27, 1993. The bullet came from a 9 mm Glock handgun belonging to her fiance, John J. Vojtas, a Brentwood policeman.

The death was ruled a suicide. But on Aug. 13, 1999, the jury hearing a federal lawsuit brought by Barrett's estate decided that Vojtas intentionally had subjected Barrett to "severe physical and emotional distress" that led to her death.

The jury did not hold the borough itself liable because it decided that of the four components necessary to do so under federal civil-rights law, one was lacking.

Barrett's death was not a "foreseeable consequence" of borough officials' failure to discipline Vojtas, it ruled, despite his involvement in 16 recorded incidents of domestic violence with a total of three battered women.

Vojtas himself was found culpable under Pennsylvania -- not federal -- law. While a handful of Americans had been sued previously for causing someone to commit suicide, attorneys said this was the first time such a claim was upheld by a jury and sustained through the appeals process.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Cindrich, who presided at the trial, must approve the settlement for it to take effect. He is likely to do so next week. Under the terms of the agreement, neither Vojtas nor Barrett's family may divulge its terms.

Half the money will go to Barrett's parents. The remainder will be placed in a trust for Jacqueline Barrett, Judith's 12-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.

Vojtas was promoted to sergeant less than a year after he was cleared of criminal charges in the death of Jonny Gammage in a scuffle that followed a traffic stop on Route 51 in October 1995. He was reassigned from patrol to administrative duty in 1999 after the Barrett verdict.

While the settlement resolves the lawsuit, it leaves unanswered a number of questions raised by testimony in the case. Among them:

Why didn't Vojtas notify Brentwood police that Barrett had taken his gun and was threatening to kill herself?
Vojtas testified he found suicide notes Barrett had written on paper plates and left on his kitchen table and that she phoned him minutes before her death and told him she had his gun. After confirming the weapon was gone, he called the Brentwood Police Department -- to ask for a ride. He did not mention Barrett, who had called from a pay phone located less than a mile from the police station and 80 feet from the bus kiosk where, moments later, her body was found.

Why hasn't Vojtas been prosecuted for lying about his use of steroids at the coroner's inquest in the Gammage case?
In November 1995, Vojtas testified in the Gammage inquest that he had used steroids only once.

In his testimony in the Barrett case, he eventually admitted he had used them in eight-week cycles over a period of about a decade. A fellow Brentwood police officer, George Swinney, testified that he had injected Vojtas with steroids on several occasions, an assertion that Vojtas denied.

Although the statute of limitations on perjury is five years, a spokesman for Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. said the law permits the DA to seek an extension in a case where prosecutors have no way to know at the time of the testimony that it is perjurious. In the case of a public official, such as a police officer, that extension could be as long as five years.

Where did Vojtas get the $9,300 in cash he pulled from an oversized envelope to pay for the diamond engagement ring he purchased on Dec. 23, 1996, for Mary Ann Caponi, who is now his wife?
Vojtas testified that the money was a Christmas gift from his widowed mother, who inherited it from an aunt, Anna Kush, who died in Ohio in 1989 or 1990. But a search of records by the Ohio Department of Vital Statistics indicates that no one by that name died in Ohio during those years.

Lisa Lightner Siegworth, Vojtas' former common-law wife, testified at a deposition that Vojtas kept large sums of cash in his locker at the police station when they lived together. Former Brentwood Police Chief Wayne Babish said he ordered Vojtas to open his locker at the police station after hearing similar allegations from a borough official and three other officers. He said Vojtas refused on the grounds that the locker contained only his personal property. The borough's solicitor advised Babish not to pursue the matter, Babish said.

Bank records subpoenaed by attorneys for the Barrett estate showed a pattern of twice-monthly transfers to Vojtas' banking and checking accounts in amounts ranging from $100 to $1,500, in addition to the paychecks he deposited. The transfers had begun by 1990 and stopped in 1996. Vojtas has testified repeatedly that he earned less than $50,000 a year as a police officer and had no other source of income except for gifts from his mother and the cash he received working as a doorman at a bar in Brentwood for a few nights in the spring of 1993.

Siegworth testified she had overheard Vojtas discuss with a local jeweler a scheme to report jewelry missing from the trunk of a stolen car and thereby reap an insurance windfall. Both men denied they had such a conversation.

The jeweler was not a Brentwood resident, nor was his shop located there. But shortly before midnight on April 14, 1987, he reported to Brentwood police that his black 1983 Cadillac had been stolen outside a bar in the borough. There had been $25,000 worth of jewelry stashed under a front seat, he said.

The officer originally assigned to the case was Jim Fox, the uncle of John Vojtas' first wife, Vicki. Vojtas himself took over the investigation the following morning.

He later gave copies of both the original complaint and his own subsequent supplemental report to the purported victim for insurance purposes.

The missing car was recovered the following day by Mount Oliver police, who found it abandoned, sans jewelry, in the parking lot of a Moose lodge. Vojtas' written report raised the possibility that sudden braking could have caused the boxes containing the jewelry to slide from their hiding place under the seat into plain view of the car thief.

What was the nature of the relationship between video poker operators in Brentwood and the borough's political hierarchy?
A former Brentwood police officer, Harry Lutton, testified he was ordered to terminate his surveillance of an establishment he suspected of making illicit payoffs to customers who played the machines. Lutton said he was told the order came from James Joyce, then the mayor of Brentwood.

"He told Lt. [Milton] Mulholland to leave it alone, and Lt. Mulholland told me," said Lutton. Joyce has since died. Mulholland retired shortly after the Gammage stop, which he initiated.

Other Brentwood officers testified that they had heard that illicit video poker machines were operating with the blessing of borough officials and assumed that there were payoffs to politicians.

Vince Reda, the operator of one such establishment in Brookline, arranged a meeting between Vojtas and David S. Shrager, a Downtown attorney, in advance of the Gammage inquest.

Reda suggested that Shrager represent Vojtas and agreed to pick up the tab. Vojtas acknowledged consulting Shrager at Reda's behest, although Shrager later rejected the case.