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Jury Selection Under Way For Retrial Of Philadelphia Man

By Steve Tawa

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A Philadelphia man is going on trial for a second time, more than 30-years after his sons died in a fire in their Oxford Circle home.

This is a retrial for 56-year-old Daniel Dougherty, whom a jury convicted in 2000 of murdering his 3 and 4-year-old sons in an intentionally-set house fire in 1985. They died of smoke inhalation.

Dougherty was sent to death row, but his sentence was vacated in 2012 after an appeals court ruled his defense lawyer, now deceased, was ineffective. Now, he has a new defense team.

Before a panel of 60 potential jurors was brought out for questioning, Assistant District Attorney Jude Conroy said they want to introduce evidence that weeks before the fire, Dougherty threw one of his boys in the trunk of his car to discipline him.

Defense lawyer David Fryman intends to call witnesses who knew Dougherty and will testify that he loved his sons.

Prosecutors and defense counsel argued over whether a jury should view photos of how the boys were found in their beds. Central to the case will be the fire science used in the mid 1980s that led to a jury convicting Dougherty.

At one point Judge Scott O'Keefe scolded the defendant, after Dougherty kept turning around at the defense table to make contact with his family sitting behind him.

Dougherty turned to the judge, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Ain't I innocent?"

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