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.
If Mr. Marshall has a good record in prison, he is likely to serve roughly eight months behind bars. He showed no response as Justice Bartley read the sentence, although his wife, Charlene, was heard to sob from her seat in the courtroom.
“It is a paradox to me that such abundance has led to such incredible sadness,” Justice Bartley said. “Your acts notwithstanding, I do believe you did love your mother. The question of what you did was settled by the jury’s verdict.”
Of Mrs. Astor, the judge said: “What would she say if she were here? Would she blanch at the spectacle?”
The sentencing followed lengthy speeches by both the prosecution and the defense. They began at 10:30 a.m. and stretched into the afternoon. Joel J. Seidman, the prosecutor, referred to what Mr. Marshall had done as “Grand Theft Astor” and called it “basically a six-year crime spree involving a series of larcenies.” He said that in giving himself a salary increase from $450,000 to $1.36 million for managing Mrs. Astor’s money, Mr. Marshall showed “a sense of entitlement.”
“He wouldn’t have deigned to go to Mrs. Astor when she was competent and ask for a 208-percent raise,” Mr. Seidman said. Referring to Mr. Marshall’s service in World War II as he called for prison time, he added: “A Marine Corps. tie clasp should not be used as a Monopoly get-out-of-jail card.”
Mr. Marshall’s defense lawyer, John R. Cuti, gave a long summary of Mr. Marshall’s life story, from his mother’s abusive marriage to his father, and her subsequent remarriages, to — once again — Mr. Marshall’s service in the Marines and his experience during the battle of Iwo Jima. He also spoke of Mr. Marshall’s work with the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950s, and the ambassadorial posts he held in the 1960s and 1970s.
“He’s not some venal credit-card thief or pick pocket or any of the other labels Mr. Seidman hurled at him,” Mr. Cuti said. A moment later, he added, “He’s not somebody who stuck his hand in the cookie jar when no one was looking.”
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’s co-defendant, Francis X. Morrissey, who was convicted of one count, will be sentenced later Monday. 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. 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.
