A frail, pale, weary-looking Anthony Marshall was rolled in his wheelchair into the audience of the Manhattan Appellate Division today — the unofficial Exhibit A in arguments that he really oughtn’t go to jail for swindling millions from his famous, white-gloved philanthropist mother, Brooke Astor.
“I can’t imagine the purpose of imprisoning a man who is so ill!” Marshall’s lawyer, John Cuti, told the panel of five judges, waving his arm to indicate Marshall, who sat in his chair besides his wife, Charlene.
Both the patrician husband and the portly wife — infamously dubbed “Miss Piggy” by one of Astor’s nurses — wore appropriately sad expressions for the judges. Marshall, a WWII veteran who earned a Purple Heart and fought at Iwo Jima, is at risk from diverticulitis attacks, falls and heart problems, his lawyers have argued.
“This is a man who is falling down and hitting his head into a wall,” Marshall’s lawyer thundered, recalling a header the old man had taken in a courthouse men’s room during his ’09 swindle trial, at which he was convicted of stealing $2 million from Astor and trying to plunder more than $60 million more.
“And having a stroke while he’s on trial,” Cuti added — a reference to a mini-stroke Marshall suffered. “Do you want to send this man to prison so he dies there?”
Marshall and his co-defendant crooked estates lawyer, Francis Morrissey, have been free pending appeal since both were sentenced in December, 2009 to one-to-three years prison.
Two of the judges — associate justices Rosalyn Richter and Darcel Clark — asked a lawyer for the Manhattan DA’s office, Gina Mignola, what purpose would be served by putting Marshall in jail, given his age and health.
“So society will understand that we here will defend our elderly,” Mignola said — referring the the Alzheimer’s afflicted Astor, who was 105 when she died in 2007.
“All he is saying is, ‘Hey, I’m old. And my health isn’t good,” the lawyer, Mignola told the judges, noting that Marshall has shown no remorse and only paid back $12 million to his mother’s estate when directed to by a Surrogate judge in Westchester.
The appellate panel did not indicate when they will rule on Marshall’s and Morrissey’s arguments on several grounds to dismiss the verdicts — including insufficiency of evidence, that a holdout juror was pressured, and that Astor was competent in giving her son the money.