Attorney who prosecuted baseball cocaine scandal
J. Alan Johnson always got his man.
He was so talented a prosecutor and later a defense lawyer, that Mr. Johnson — “Jerry” to friends — was even considered for the position of FBI director.
Colleagues — many refer to themselves as admirers — say he could make just about anybody squirm on the witness stand.
“He was in some respects bigger than life. He could take the stage and tell a story,” said former Gov. Tom Corbett, a friend and fellow prosecutor for many years. “He had a talent for it. Jerry was a character.”
Best known as the U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania’s Western District from 1981 to 1988, Mr. Johnson prosecuted several high profile cases, bringing down mobsters, frauds and drug dealers who sold cocaine to Major League Baseball players like former Pirates outfielder Dave Parker.
“Jerry was just an absolutely superb lawyer and one of the greatest legal minds in the history of Allegheny County,” said Common Pleas Court Judge Philip Ignelzi, who also worked alongside Mr. Johnson in the federal prosecutor’s office. “He was as sharp a legal mind and as dynamic a lawyer as we’ve ever had.”
“The first great choice I made was making him my first assistant and the second was working to help him become the U.S. attorney,” said former Judge Robert Cindrich, who held the U.S. attorney’s chair before Mr. Johnson and went on to serve as a U.S. district judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania. “He was a merit candidate and he was deep into organized crime and official corruption.”
Mr. Johnson died April 22, surrounded by family and friends at his Ross home after a long battle with dementia. He was 79.
He grew up in Morgantown, W.Va., where his father worked as a frozen foods salesman.
“He came from a humble background,” said his son Jason Johnson, of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Though the family moved to West View when he grew older, Mr. Johnson could easily summon a Southern drawl that harkened back to his days in West Virginia, friends said.
“He just loved to tell stories and talk about his time in West Virginia,” recalled Mr. Corbett, who worked with Mr. Johnson in the U.S. attorney’s office from 1980 to 1983. “He had just a little accent, but he could exaggerate it when he wanted to.”
He was even a bit of a hell raiser as a teen, racing his mother’s car at the Mercer Raceway Park in Mercer County and joining a rock band.
“He did this surreptitiously and he also played in the marching band in North Hills High School and in The Cavaliers, a rock band,” said his wife, Kristen Johnson. “He was the drummer.”
The couple met in elementary school and married in 1971.
After he graduated from North Hills High School, Mr. Johnson attended the Valley Forge Military Academy, which quelled any remaining youthful rebellion.
In 1968, he earned a business degree at Kent State University.
At Kent State, Mr. Johnson served in the ROTC and he later became an Army reservist at Fort Benning, Ga.
By 1971, he graduated from Duquesne University School of Law and began his nearly 50-year career at the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office.
“We were in the DA’s office doing homicide and felony cases and that’s how I got to know him,” Mr. Cindrich recalled. “Afterward, Jerry came to the U.S. attorney’s office as part of the U.S.
Federal Strike Force prosecuting organized crime, but he stayed on. I knew him as an outstanding lawyer and he was wonderful — he had a great booming voice and he could speak to a jury.”
After serving as a special attorney with the federal strike force, Mr. Johnson joined the U.S. attorney’s office in 1976. Just a year later, he was appointed section chief of the criminal division.
He prosecuted several newsworthy cases of the day, including in 1976, when he and his young colleague Jeffrey A. Manning — who would go on to become a Common Pleas Court judge — successfully prosecuted former local magistrates on charges they accepted kickbacks from a bail bond agency.
In 1978, Mr. Johnson was among the federal prosecutors in an FBI sting operation that ensnared members of the Boston mob as they attempted to sell $23.2 million in stolen securities to undercover agents at the Downtown Hilton Hotel.
By 1981, Mr. Cindrich, a Democrat, stepped aside “as a matter of principle,” he said, to allow the newly inaugurated President Ronald Reagan to appoint a member of the GOP.
“It’s the custom for the U.S. attorneys to resign when there’s a change of parties,” Mr. Cindrich said.
Reagan appointed Mr. Johnson, a Republican, to head the office shortly afterward.
Though they had different political beliefs, it never interfered with the important work they did, Mr. Cindrich said.
“We had such a wonderful group of people,” he said. “One of the things I miss about that world — it didn’t really matter, your political affiliation. Respect was earned by merit. I hired Tom Corbett as one of my assistants and I never even asked him what party he belonged to. That kind of camaraderie that we had with people from different backgrounds … I miss it.”
As U.S. attorney, Mr. Johnson prosecuted the Major League Baseball drug case, in which 19 professional baseball players testified or were implicated in buying drugs.
The 1985 investigation led to the prosecution of several men who were convicted of selling cocaine to former baseball players.
Despite being criticized by some at the time for granting immunity to players in exchange for their testimony, the investigation and subsequent trials drew national attention to the widespread abuse of illegal drugs in baseball.
Mr. Johnson defended his decision by pointing out the office’s policy of pursuing drug dealers, not users. He also felt baseball players shouldn’t be treated differently due to their celebrity status.
“I’m not in a public relations battle,” he said at the time. “If I was, I wouldn’t have pursued the case.”
The trial, he said, “shined a light” into a national cocaine problem that was so widespread that it “has reached our national pastime.”
“It really bothered him that there was this kind of activity going on. He was a baseball fan and he knew kids looked up to those players,” Mr. Cindrich said. “Jerry felt very strongly about that case.”
Known for his even-handedness, Mr. Johnson was also admired for prosecuting defense contractors convicted of inflating the price of F-15 fighter jet parts and for personally trying the case against Ashland Oil on charges relating to a spill of more than 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the Monongahela River.
Under his leadership, the U.S. attorney’s office vigorously pursued narcotics cases, prosecuting cocaine traffickers and exposing the reach of organized crime in the Pittsburgh area.
By 1988, Mr. Johnson stepped down to allow another new president, this time George H. W. Bush, to appoint his own representative.
He went to work in private practice as a criminal defense attorney.
Described as “polished and dapper” and “dressed like a Wall Street lawyer,” in a December 1995 Post-Gazette story, Mr. Johnson defended one of three men accused of fixing 472 traffic cases.
At the time, Common Pleas Court Judge David R. Cashman called Mr. Johnson “one of the top lawyers around.”
“He’s very good at the art of doing direct examination, getting witnesses to tell a precise, informative version of the facts as they know them.”
Judge Ignelzi left the U.S. attorney’s office when Mr. Johnson did and worked closely with him in several criminal defense cases, including the ticket-fixing case.
“We became even closer after I left,” he recalled. “We worked mainly white-collar criminal cases. He and I worked many, many, many cases together.”
In 1996, Mr. Johnson represented Joseph Moses, maintenance director for Allegheny County, when he was convicted and sentenced to four years in federal prison for his role in orchestrating a kickback scheme with a concrete contractor.
“He was a lawyer’s lawyer and a great criminal defense attorney,” Mr. Cindrich said. “It doesn’t matter what side of the table you’re on. If you believe in justice, both sides should be represented.”
What others may not have known about Mr. Johnson was that he was among the final three candidates for the job of director of the FBI in 1987, Judge Ignelzi said.
“He was in the running to become the director of the FBI. That’s how wellthought of Jerry was nationally,” he said. “He got to know people like Rudy Giuliani when he chaired the [U.S. Attorney General’s Advisory Committee].”
Although William Sessions eventually got the job, it wasn’t the last time Mr. Johnson would be tapped for greatness, Judge Ignelzi said.
“Jerry’s name was seriously thrown around, but he would not submit to be appointed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals,” he said. “I’m convinced if he would have put his name forward he would have gotten the appointment, but he felt he was too young for the position and he wanted to be trying cases. Jerry never told me about any of this. He was far too humble. But, I heard it from other people.”
“Jerry always wanted to be in the action,” Mr. Corbett agreed.“It was exciting.”
Forthright and honest, he should be remembered for his considerable impact in the legal profession, friends said.
Along with his wife and sons, Mr. Johnson is survived by three grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to BRiTE Wellness Program, 1310 Old Freeport Road, Suite 38214, Pittsburgh, PA 15238.