Anthony Marshall sentenced to 1 to 3 yrs. in prison for fleecing mother, Brooke Astor, out of estate
Jose Martinez/Corky Siemaszko
December 21, 2009
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/12/21/2009-12-21_sentencing_in_brooke_astor_case_prosecutors_push_for_serious_prison_time_for_ant.html
Brooke Astor’s son is going to jail.

A frail, white-haired Anthony Marshall was sentenced Monday to 1-to-3 years in state prison for looting his late mother’s $185 million fortune.

The 85-year-old son of New York’s beloved grande dame, who has been free on bail since his arrest in November 2007, was ordered to surrender on Jan. 19.

His much-maligned wife, Charlene, wept as Marshall was sentenced. She was not charged with a crime, but prosecutors claimed her greed drove Marshall to rip off his senile socialite mother.

Marshall’s lawyer buddy Francis Morrissey, 66, was expected to be sentenced later for forging Astor’s signature on a will.

Before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley imposed his punishment, Marshall rose to his own defense - and said next to nothing.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” the former Marine said when the judge asked if he had anything to say. “I have nothing to add to what my attorneys have said.”

Marshall was never called to the stand during the epic trial where he and Morrissey were convicted of fleecing the senile socialite out of millions.

What little Marshall said came after his lawyer, John Cuti, asked Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley if there was “any way to avoid some of the horrors of incarceration for someone like Mr. Marshall.”

“He’s not some venal credit card thief or pickpocket,” Cuti said.

Prosecutors asked Bartley to sentence Marshall to up to 4 1/2 years in prison.

Charging Marshall engaged in “grand theft Astor,” Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann said “he didn’t steal from his mother to give to the Coalition for the Homeless, he didn’t steal from Brooke Astor to give to the poor and downtrodden.”

“If Mrs. Astor were alive today, there’s no reason to believe the defendant and Mr. Morrissey wouldn’t have continued to plunder her estate until nothing was left,” the prosecutor said.

Astor was forced to live in squalor until her death two years ago at age 105, he added.

Seidemann also took a slap at celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg and Al Roker, who sent the judge letters on Marshall’s behalf pleading for leniency.

“When you’re stealing millions from mother it’s not enough to say you’re nice to Whoopi Goldberg,” he said.

As for Morrissey, Seidemann dismissed him as a “crooked lawyer.”

Cuti argued that prison time would kill Marshall, who suffers from heart problems and had quadruple-bypass surgery last year.

In their letters, Marshall’s pals asked Bartley to toss the top count and keep Marshall out of prison “in furtherance of justice,” a rare move.

Marshall gets 1 to 3 years for swindling mother
POST STAFF REPORT
December 21, 2009
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/astor_son_greed_hard_to_fathom_prosecutor_DALQL8dJmJ562nFePzv7kO
Brooke Astor’s 85-year-old son has been sentenced to one to three years in prison for plundering the New York philanthropist’s millions, but he’s still free for now.

Anthony Marshall was sentenced today to the minimum allowed. But the judge gave him 30 days to get his affairs in order. He might then be able to stay free on bail indefinitely while his expected appeal proceeds.

Marshall tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to throw out the part of his October conviction that requires prison time.

Defense lawyers have said the former ambassador’s illnesses could make any prison term an undeserved death sentence.

Marshall was convicted of exploiting Astor’s mental frailty to steal from her nearly $200 million fortune. She died at 105 in 2007.

Prosecutor Joel Seidemann this morning had asked for one and a half to four and a half years in prison for Marshall.

Seidemann also asked not that Marshall not be allowed to remain free pending appeal but said the DA’s office consents to Marhsall remaining free for now and not turning himself until after New Year’s.

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

Seidemann spoke at length at the sentencing of Marshall on 13 felonies connected to his attempt to loot more than $60 million from his mother’s estate before her death, at age 105, in 2007.

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 his wife, 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.”

Justice Kirke Bartley is expected to turn thumbs down on a defense motion seeking dismissal, in the interest of justice, of the one grand larceny charge carrying a mandatory prison sentence.

That conviction, which requires a minimum of one year upstate, was for Marshall awarding himself more than $2 million in back pay and other perks out of his famous philanthropist mother’s coffers — his self-decreed reward for doing such a good job “managing” her affairs.

With Post Wire Services

Brooke Astor’s Son Is Sentenced to Prison
James Barron
December 21, 2009
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/nyregion/22astor.html?hp
Anthony D. Marshall, who was convicted of siphoning millions from his mother, Brooke Astor, was sentenced Monday to one to three years in prison.

Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr. said Mr. Marshall, who is 85, must report to prison on Jan. 19.

The sentence was for the most serious of 14 counts on which Mr. Marshall was convicted: first-degree grand larceny, for giving himself a retroactive lump-sum raise of about $1 million for managing his mother’s finances. Justice Bartley also sentenced Mr. Marshall to one year on each of the 13 other charges he was convicted of, to run at the same time as the longer sentence.

The sentencing followed lengthy speeches by both the prosecution and the defense. They began at 10 a.m. and stretched well into the afternoon before the sentence was read. Mr. Marshall had only 11 words for the courtroom when it came time for him to speak, telling Justice Bartley: “I have nothing to add to what my attorneys have said.”

Mr. Marshall arrived on the frigid morning in a gray overcoat and blue scarf, and needed help navigating the icy streets. He was convicted in October after a five-month trial that brought a galaxy of Mrs. Astor’s celebrity friends to Justice Bartley’s State Supreme Court courtroom at 100 Centre Street, among them David Rockefeller, Annette de la Renta, Henry A. Kissinger and Barbara Walters. They all appeared as witnesses for the prosecution; the defense called no witnesses — not even Mr. Marshall, in a strategy some jurors said had tipped the balance against him once they began deliberating.

The witnesses took the stand to flesh out prosecutors’ claims about Mr. Marshall’s financial dealings. Perhaps without meaning to, their testimony also described the dark complement to Mrs. Astor’s glittering social life, her deterioration as she passed 90 and then 100. The novelist Louis Auchincloss described a painful afternoon in 2001 at a private club on the Upper East Side where he said Mrs. Astor “knew she ought to know me” but could not place him. Mrs. Astor died in 2007 at 105.

The trial focused on a tangle of wills and codicils that the prosecution said she signed under pressure from Mr. Marshall.

Most prominent among them was the will she signed in 2002 calling for most of her fortune to go to him. Mrs. Astor, who all but single-handedly gave away nearly $200 million of her late husband’s money while she was alive, had promised millions more to institutions like the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art on her death.

The jury deliberated for 12 days before announcing its verdict: guilty on 14 of the 16 counts against Mr. Marshall. He was cleared on a first-degree grand larceny charge that had to do with selling one of Mrs. Astor’s favorite paintings while she was still alive; Mr. Marshall had paid himself a $2 million commission on the $10 million transaction. He was also acquitted on a charge that had to do with falsifying business records.

Another charge involved a $1 million raise he had given himself for managing her finances. The jury eventually decided that Mr. Marshall misused his power of attorney when he did so.

And even the jurors themselves provided a moment of theater, when it became known that one juror had felt “personally threatened” by another juror during the deliberations. The jury sent a note to Justice Bartley that said, “Due to heated argument, a juror feels personally threatened by comments made by another juror.”

Mr. Marshall’s lawyers immediately moved for a mistrial. Justice Bartley denied the motion and ordered the jurors to “hang in there,” sending them back to the jury room with orders to show “respect and civility.” Some lawyers not involved with the case said the note provided the defense with grounds for an appeal.

In contrast to its strategy of calling no witnesses at the trial, the defense rallied more than 75 of Mr. Marshall’s friends after the verdict, among them Whoopi Goldberg, a neighbor from the Marshalls’ apartment building on the Upper East Side, and Al Roker, the weather anchor of the “Today” show.

They wrote to Justice Bartley, urging him to thrown out the first-degree larceny conviction, which carried mandatory prison time. Mr. Marshall’s lawyers said that sending him to prison would be tantamount to imposing a death sentence. Mr. Marshall has a long record of health problems; he underwent quadruple bypass surgery last year.

The prosecution disputed the letter-writing campaign, calling Mr. Marshall “nothing more than ‘a thief in a three-piece suit.’ ”

The sentence was the latest chapter in an intergenerational feud that exploded in the fall of 2006 when Mr. Marshall’s son, Philip, filed a guardianship petition asserting that Mr. Marshall had neglected Mrs. Astor’s care. Philip Marshall said Anthony Marshall had failed to fill her prescriptions, cleared out the artworks in her apartment, kept the heat or air conditioning off to save money and forced her to sleep on a couch that smelled of urine.

Mr. Marshall denied his son’s allegations, and in 2006 a State Supreme Court justice said claims of elder abuse had not been substantiated. But even before the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed the charges that led to the trial, he gave up his longtime role in managing his mother’s financial affairs.