Robert
Morris Morgenthau (July 31, 1919 – July 21, 2019) was an American lawyer. From
1975 until his retirement in 2009, he was the District Attorney for New York
County, the borough of Manhattan, having previously served as United States
Attorney for the Southern District of New York throughout much of the 1960s on
the appointment of John F. Kennedy. At retirement, Morgenthau was the
longest-serving district attorney in the history of the State of New York,
although William V. Grady of Dutchess County surpassed this record at the
midway point of his ninth term on January 1, 2018.
Career as
U.S. Attorney
In 1961,
after 12 years of practicing corporate law, Morgenthau accepted an appointment
from President John F. Kennedy as United States Attorney for the Southern
District of New York. In 1962, he was the Democratic nominee for Governor of
New York, and resigned his federal office. After his defeat by the incumbent
Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Morgenthau was reappointed U.S. Attorney and
served for the remainder of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
In January
1969, following the election of President Richard M. Nixon, Morgenthau remained
in office, and for months resisted increasingly public pressures from the Nixon
Administration to resign. He retained support from New York's liberal
Republican U.S. Senators Jacob K. Javits and Charles Goodell. Morgenthau and
his supporters claimed that replacing him would disrupt his work on vital
cases, and that Nixon might be seeking to prevent Morgenthau from pursuing
investigations that would prove embarrassing to the President or his friends.
Nonetheless, Morgenthau's position became increasingly untenable. While
well-regarded, he was after all a Democrat, thought to harbor political
aspirations. Morgenthau's insistence on remaining in office seemed increasingly
unreasonable. He was eventually forced out of office at the end of 1969. Republican Whitney North Seymour, Jr. was
appointed as US Attorney of New York.
District Attorney for New York County (Manhattan)
Morgenthau returned to private life until 1974, when he was
elected to the office of District Attorney of New York County. This was a
special election caused by the death of Frank Hogan, who had served as DA for
more than 30 years. Morgenthau defeated Hogan's interim successor, Richard Kuh.
He was elected to a full term in 1977, and was re-elected seven times. He was
not opposed in a general election from 1985 to 2005.
Morgenthau was criticized in the press for his conduct in the
wake of a major police corruption scandal. Eight men who were falsely arrested
by transit police officers in the scandal that shook the department were
awarded more than $1 million in damages by a federal judge. One plaintiff,
Ronald Yeadon, was a police officer. He was arrested twice while off duty and
accused of sexually abusing a woman.
Morgenthau retained a national profile while serving in what was
technically a local office, in part because of his dogged pursuit of
white-collar crime. According to Gary Naftalis, a prominent Manhattan defense
attorney who had been an assistant to Morgenthau in the 1960s, Morgenthau
believed that prosecuting "crime in the suites" was every bit as important
as prosecuting "crime in the streets".
Morgenthau announced in 2005, aged 85, that he would run for a
ninth full term as district attorney. For the first time in decades, he
encountered a vigorous primary opponent - former state court judge Leslie
Crocker Snyder. Snyder won the endorsement of the New York Times, which, like
virtually all of the city's establishment, had long supported Morgenthau.
Morgenthau won the Democratic primary with 59% of the vote, to
Snyder's 41%. In the general election, he was once again the candidate for all
political parties in the election, having been nominated by the Democrats,
Republicans, and the Working Families Party. Morgenthau won re-election with
more than 99% of the vote.
Notable Cases
·
Mark David Chapmsn
(1981): Chapman pleaded guilty to killing John Lennon
·
Bernie Goetz, the
"Subway Vigilante" (1987): Charged with attempted murder, assault,
reckless endangerment and several gun law violations after he shot four men who
he felt were trying to rob him in 1984.
·
Robert Chambers, the
"Preppie Killer" (1988): After confessing to killing an 18-year-old
girl, Chambers was convicted of manslaughter and served 15 years in prison.
·
Central Park Jogger
case (1989): Five teenaged suspects were convicted of assaulting and raping a
woman in Central Park. After Morgenthau's office investigated the confession in
2002 by another man, including finding that his DNA matched evidence at the
scene, he recommended vacating the convictions of the five men and dismissal of
charges, which the court accomplished.
·
BCCI (1991): A fraud
investigation revealed that the bank laundered massive amounts of money for
criminal enterprises and had unlawfully gained control of First American
Bankshares, a major American bank. Morgenthau claimed jurisdiction on two
counts - not only did First American have a subsidiary in New York, but
millions of the laundered dollars had flowed through Manhattan. The bank was
seized by federal regulators shortly before Morgenthau indicted it for what he
described as "the largest bank fraud in world financial history". Its
liquidators ultimately pleaded guilty to all charges, and forfeited all of the
bank's American assets.
·
Sante and Kenny Kimes
(2000): These mom-and-son grifters were convicted of murder.
·
Dennis Kozlowski and
Mark Swartz (2005): The top two executives of Tyco were found guilty of
stealing more than $150 million from the company they had been entrusted to
manage.
·
Tupac Shakur (1994),
he was convicted in New York City of three charges of sexual molestation, and
served nine months in prison.
Death
Morgenthau died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on July 21, 2019, ten days before his 100th birthday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morgenthau
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