Astor son gets 1-3 years for looting mom’s money
Jennifer Peltz/Associated Press
December 21, 2009.
Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091221/ap_on_re_us/us_brooke_astor
NEW YORK – The 85-year-old son of philanthropist Brooke Astor was sentenced Monday to as many as three years in prison for exploiting her mental frailty to plunder her millions, but the legal saga surrounding the society doyenne’s fortune will persist with planned appeals.

Anthony Marshall showed little emotion as state Supreme Court Justice A. Kirke Bartley sentenced him to one to three years in prison — the minimum term his conviction required — for looting the fortune of his mother, who gave away nearly $200 million to institutions and charities before she died at age 105 in 2007.

Marshall will remain free for at least the next month as his defense lawyers try to persuade an appeals court to let Marshall remain free on bail while his planned appeal plays out.

The judge noted Marshall’s World War II service and the possibility that the late Astor herself would have been aghast to see her son imprisoned, but he added that the law left him no choice but to impose a prison term.

“It is a paradox to me that such abundance has led to such incredible sadness,” Bartley said. He gave Marshall until Jan. 19 to provide his medical information to prison officials and otherwise prepare for life behind bars.

Marshall declined to speak at his sentencing, where prosecutors described him as an unrepentant thief who deserved punishment, while his lawyers strove to portray him as a dutiful son who believed his mother wanted him to have the money and items he was convicted of stealing.

Before leaving court, the stooped, unsteady Marshall sat for a minute on a bench in the courtroom audience, his tearful wife’s arm around his shoulders. He nearly stumbled over a pile of snow as he and his wife, Charlene, walked to a waiting car.

Co-defendant Francis X. Morrissey Jr., 67, an estates lawyer convicted of helping Marshall steal his mother’s money, was also sentenced Monday to one to three years in prison. Like Marshall, Morrissey will remain free until Jan. 19 and is planning to appeal.

Marshall faced as many as 25 years in prison after being convicted of 14 counts, including grand larceny and scheming to defraud, for looting his mother’s nearly $200 million fortune. She was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease when she died.

In the final year of her life, the nasty family feud over her care was splashed all over the city’s tabloids — including allegations that she was forced to sleep in a torn nightgown on a couch that smelled of urine while subsisting on a diet of pureed peas and oatmeal. Those allegations were never substantiated.

Defense lawyers have said Marshall’s myriad illnesses would make any prison term a virtual death sentence.

Marshall’s Oct. 8 conviction followed a five-month trial in which Manhattan prosecutors painted him as an impatient heir who schemed to get his hands on his disoriented mother’s money, though she had already provided for him generously.

Prosecutors, who brought in such prominent Astor friends as Barbara Walters and Henry Kissinger to help make their case, say Marshall manipulated Astor into changing her will and even helped himself to artwork from her walls.

“The defendant’s economic and social standing shouldn’t put him above the herd,” Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann said. “He shouldn’t be treated as anything other than a common thief.”

Defense lawyers say Marshall had the legal power to give himself gifts with his mother’s money, and she was lucid when she changed her will to benefit her only child. He consulted with attorneys throughout, they noted.

“I think the fairest way to think about it is that there is a man who, maybe, felt entitled — and in hindsight felt too entitled — but he’s not somebody who simply stuck his hand in the cookie jar when no one was looking,” defense lawyer John R. Cuti said as he argued for leniency for Marshall.

Marshall didn’t testify or call any witnesses at his trial. After his conviction, he aired details of his life — from childhood sorrows to his current health problems — and lined up some celebrity supporters of his own in a bid to stay free.

Al Roker, a fellow parishioner at Marshall’s church, praised the decorated World War II veteran as a “good son, father and patriot.” Neighbor Whoopi Goldberg told the judge in a letter that jailing him “would only amount to an unnecessary cruelty that would serve no real purpose.”

Prosecutors dismissed the letters as belated and irrelevant.

“When you steal millions from your mother, it isn’t enough to say you’re nice to Whoopi Goldberg,” Seidemann said.

Under Marshall’s sentence, he generally would have to serve at least a year in prison before being eligible for parole. But he might be able to request parole earlier for medical reasons.

Meanwhile, a fight over Astor’s estate continues in civil court, pitting Marshall against several charities. It was on hold during the criminal case.

Citing the will fight, Bartley turned down prosecutors’ request to force Marshall to pay more than $12 million as restitution.

Astor was seen as the queen of New York society and a power in the city’s philanthropic scene, supporting such grand institutions as Carnegie Hall and such humble needs as a new boiler for a youth center. Her efforts won her a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1998.

Anthony Marshall gets 1 to 3 years for swindling mother
Laura Italiano
December 21, 2009
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/astor_son_greed_hard_to_fathom_prosecutor_DALQL8dJmJ562nFePzv7kO/0
He’ll be home for Christmas, and maybe well beyond.

Anthony Marshall must serve at least one year prison for trying to swindle his own mother — the city’s famed philanthropist, Brooke Astor — but he can stay home for the holidays, a Manhattan judge ruled this morning.

The ruling lets Marshall remain free until Jan. 19., while his lawyers prepare an appeal, and, of much more immediate importance, arguments for the state Appellate Division that Marshall be allowed to remain at liberty for the duration of that appeal.

And given the length of the swindle trial and the quantity of materials for appellate review — the trial transcript alone is some 17,000 pages — the appeal, and Marshall’s potential continued freedom, could span years.

The good news came after a lengthy beg-a-thon for mercy this morning by Marshall’s lawyers, who launched into such a lengthy litany of the 85-year-old’s physical ills that the judge interrupted the proceeding to complain, “Tell me something I do not know, sir.”

Among Marshall’s afflictions, as described by his lawyers, are his bad heart, high blood pressure, teetering balance, serious diverticulitis, and — a new one — a Parkinson’s-like ailment, recently diagnosed.

“I am mindful of his medical condition,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley snapped, angrily, as Marshall’s lawyers threatened that their client will die in prison.

“If you don’t think for one moment that I haven’t taken gat pains to review that, you are absolutely wrong sir. Tell me something I don’t know.”

With less volume, but equal force, the judge condemned Marshall for his self-inflicted injuries.

“It is a paradox to me that such abundance has led to such incredible sadness,” Bartley said.

“I think a Solomon-like decision would be simply to take those millions … that Mrs. Astor left to her son and distribute that money to the many charities that Mrs. Astor nurtured, and leave Mr. Marshall in the care of the wife and family that he has chosen,” Bartley said.

“However, I am constrained as I have been throughout to follow the law,” the judge said, referring to the mandatory one-year prison minimum he was forced, by law, to impose for the top charge Marshall was convicted of — grand larceny, for awarding himself from his mother’s coffers a galling $2 million, as salary for “managing” her affairs.

Bartley called it a “sad irony” that Marshall had been motivated all along by the wish to provide for his wife after he is gone.

“You are now facing imprisonment in state prison,” Bartley noted. “And your wife stands to inherit a great portion of [Astor's] vast, vast fortune.”

“I do believe that she did love you, Mr. Marshall,” Bartley said of Astor. “And your acts notwithstanding, I do believe that you love your mother.”

The judge also said he was much moved by Marshall’s health issues, by his heroic service during WWII, and by the ordeal of seeing Marshall’s own son, Philip, take the stand against his father.

“Watching him try his very, very best to destroy you — it was one of the very, very saddest moments I have witnessed in this courtroom.”

Another factor: What would Brooke have wanted?

“What would your mother say if she were here? Would she blanch at this spectacle? Would she admonish you?” Bartley asked.

“We can only surmise what she would say at this point.”

Marshall remained silent and solemn throughout the proceeding. Given his chance to speak, he thanked the judge, and said, “I have nothing to add to what my attorneys have said.

He almost lost his balance as he left the courthouse with Charlene, the wife whose own greed prosecutors blame the whole swindle conspiracy on. The two-decades-younger wife cried throughout the proceeding, said sobs appearing to crescendo as defense lawyers touted her husband’s war heroism and prosecutors urged the judge to order $12 million restitution.

The judge begged off the issue of how much money Marshall must pay back — saying that was best left for surrogate court judges to decide.

Marshall had lost his bid to stay out of jail entirely before the sentencing even began, when the judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Kirke Bartley, denied the defense request that the one charge carrying a mandatory one-year prison sentence be tossed “in the interest of justice.”

But he has other bites at that apple. Among the pitches defense lawyers say they may try — in the unlikely eventuality that an Appellate Court judge won’t let Marshall stay out on bail pending appeal — are the state corrections’ medical parole and work furlough programs, said defense lawyer John Cuti.

Marshall’s greed is hard to fathom, prosecutor Joel Seidemann said this morning in asking he be sent to prison for at least 1 and 1/2 years — just a half-year over the minimum required.

“It is the great mystery of this case,” the prosecutor said of Marshall’s insistence on taking more, more, more of the failing philanthropist’s fortune — despite the riches he already had.

Even before the swindle, Marshall was due to inherit $23 million in property and cash from his mother. He already enjoyed the $2 million Upper East Side apartment she’d bought him and Charlene along with a $450,000 a year salary she paid him for “managing” her affairs.

“How much money does an 85-year-old man need?” Seidemann asked.

“Was $23 million not enough for the defendant? Was that something he couldn’t live with?”

His fear –as he shut down the Westchester estate where she wanted to die, barred friends and family from visiting and literally pulled quarter-million-dollar paintings off her Fifth Avenue apartment walls — was he would not survive his mother.

“And he wanted the money now,” Seidemann said.

What’s the difference between Marshall and “common thief?” the prosecutor asked — answering his own question:

“He stole more and he stole it from his mother and he stole it from her when she was vulnerable.”