June 28--JOSEPH SWOBODA HAD IT ALL -- cars, homes and an excellent credit rating.
Noting these blessings, Lackawanna County Judge Vito P. Geroulo had one question Wednesday before sentencing the former Lackawanna County deputy coroner for conspiring to have his funeral home torched by a state trooper posing as an arsonist for hire.
Why?
"The insanity of alcohol," Mr. Swoboda, 59, said.
It's a concept he learned in Alcoholics Anonymous in the months since his arrest in August, he told the judge.
By the time he met an undercover state trooper in JJ Bridjes Restaurant in Clarks Summit the evening of Aug. 1 to offer him $40,000 to burn down the Davies and Jones Funeral home on South Main Avenue in West Scranton, Mr. Swoboda's drinking had become a daily, daylong vice.
Another thing he learned about alcoholism is that "we as alcoholics go to risk-taking -- it's part of our disease," he said.
And the risk Mr. Swoboda decided to take was to prove a hunch.
He had a feeling that his arsonist-for-hire was actually a state trooper. He was even pretty sure that the person who introduced the two that evening was an informant working for him.
"In my sick mind, I had to find out for sure," he said.
So, on Aug. 4, Mr. Swoboda met the suspected informant and handed him a manila envelope filled with 10 $100 bills -- a down payment for the job.
The arsonist was to receive another $5,000 soon after the fire, which Mr. Swoboda wanted to "look like an accident," suggesting he set a rug on fire.
The apartments inside the building were empty, he told the informant, and the next day he would show the arsonist around the building.
There was one condition that had to be met when the fire was set: It was "very important" that the arson occur while Mr. Swoboda was on vacation during the last week of August.
"In my own alcoholic mind, I thought I controlled the situation," Mr. Swoboda said in court Wednesday.
At about 2:30 on the afternoon of Aug. 5, Mr. Swoboda met the undercover trooper at JJ Bridjes and drove him to the funeral home.
He pulled behind the building, parked his car in the driveway and started pointing out different parts of structure as they walked to the front.
Then, as he unlocked the building's front door, the state troopers who arrested him on two counts of arson and one count each of criminal solicitation and reckless endangerment proved him right.
"His life is shattered," Mr. Swoboda's attorney, Joseph D'Andrea said in court, adding that Mr. Swoboda will lose his license as an undertaker and funeral director, a career he began in 1980.
When he was brought to the Lackawanna County Prison after his arrest, he was put on suicide watch for the three days he served before posting bail and admitting himself to Clearbrook Treatment Center.
"He reached his low," Mr. D'Andrea said.
In April, Mr. Swoboda pleaded guilty to one count of arson.
For all of the trouble Mr. Swoboda has caused himself, the end result has made him see the whole ordeal as something of a "blessing."
"This process has allowed me to regain my life, my sobriety and my dignity," Mr. Swoboda said.
Mr. D'Andrea echoed that point in arguing that neither Mr. Swoboda nor the community would benefit from his incarceration.
But Judge Geroulo disagreed, sentencing Mr. Swoboda to six to 23 months in the Lackawanna County Prison with time-served credit for his stint at Clearbrook. It was not clear how long Mr. Swoboda spent at the facility.
After the judge read him his sentence, Mr. Swoboda turned away as if to walk back to his family seated in the gallery.
But a sheriff's deputy stopped him, turning him around to clip handcuffs beneath his pin-striped suit's cuffs and lead him away.
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Copyright 2012 - The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.
