2ND CHANCE?
Anthony Marshall, here in court with wife Charlene, is facing up to three years’ prison for ripping off the estate of his mother, philanthropist Brooke Astor. (Steven Hirsc)
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Free Anthony Marshall!
That’s what a guilt-wracked juror — who says she was bullied into voting to convict the swindling son of philanthropist Brooke Astor — is asking the court to do in an 11th-hour plea on the eve of his surrender to prison officials.
Judi DeMarco, who as Juror No. 8 voted in 2009 to convict the 89-year-old of defrauding his high-society mom out of millions, has signed an affidavit insisting Marshall is innocent.
The document was provided to lawyers for Marshall, who on Monday is scheduled to surrender for a prison stint of 1 1/3 to 3 years.
“I acquiesced in guilty verdicts that I did not in good conscience believe were legitimate,” the Chelsea resident and former legal analyst for Bloomberg LP wrote in the 10-page sworn document dated June 8.
“I changed my vote out of fear and exhaustion, not because I had been persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt,” DeMarco, 50, said in recanting her guilty vote.
“I wished I had stood my ground and not changed my vote to guilty,” she admitted, saying she was so stressed by the pressure she once popped a Valium in the courthouse.
Sources told The Post defense attorneys will file a motion today to delay Marshall’s surrender and ask Manhattan Supreme Court Justice A. Kirke Bartley to toss the conviction based on the new information.
“It’s commonplace for judges to err on the side of caution and hold an evidentiary hearing and find out what exactly happened,” top criminal-defense attorney Gerald Shargel told The Post.
In her shocking allegations, DeMarco said the same jury used dubious reasoning to also condemn Francis X. Morrissey, an attorney who was convicted of helping Marshall carry out the fraud by forging Astor’s signature on her will in 2004.
The socialite died at age 105 in 2007 after battling Alzheimer’s disease.
Marshall and Morrissey were convicted on 14 charges, the top being grand larceny.
The duo allegedly tried to steal almost $60 million from the aging Astor. Marshall was said to have gotten away with swiping $6 million his mother had earmarked for charities, including $2 million for a pay raise and thousands more for a yacht.
DeMarco wrote in the affidavit: “The jury was so bent on finding the defendants guilty on that forgery count they came up with a theory that while the signature wasn’t forged, the document was forged because of where the witnesses’ signatures appeared.”
She added that her fellow jurors disregarded the judge’s order to check their emotions at the courthouse door.
“I frequently felt as if many of my fellow jurors were reacting emotionally to the case and not focusing dispassionately on the evidence,” she charged.
She claims several jurors verbally attacked her, ridiculed her opinions and told her she “had no common sense.”
DeMarco had been a holdout vote in the 2009 trial because she claimed another juror, TV producer Yvonne Fernandez, threatened her during deliberations.
On Oct. 5, in the third week of deliberations, the jury was considering one count regarding a pay raise Marshall had allegedly given himself from Astor’s funds.
DeMarco claims Fernandez accused her of ignoring the judge’s instructions about the charge. When DeMarco protested, one juror allegedly walked behind her and snapped, “Bulls–t.”
Then Fernandez, “a woman somewhat larger than I am, smacked her hands on the table in the jury room,” DeMarco stated in the affidavit.
“I was afraid she was going to attack me,” DeMarco affirmed, adding she believed Fernandez was making gang gestures at her.
Fernandez had allegedly told DeMarco she had dated a member of the Latin Kings gang, but other jurors swore they never saw Fernandez use hand gestures.
Justice Bartley denied the defense attorneys’ attempt to toss the conviction in 2010 based on DeMarco’s assertions because she had refused to sign a statement swearing to the coercion.
DeMarco said she wouldn’t sign the document because she was afraid of being in the media spotlight and has only ever given one interview after the conviction — to her employer, Bloomberg News.
But she has decided to come forward on the eve of Marshall and Morrissey’s lockup because she has been wracked with guilt knowing she did not uphold her promise to vote her conscience.
“I am deeply disappointed in myself for caving in to fear and not carrying out my oath to be a fair and impartial juror,” she said.
DeMarco said that the defense attorneys asked her to submit the affidavit and that she received nothing from them in return.
“My only purpose in submitting this affidavit is to let the court know the truth — that defendants did not receive what the judge told us they were entitled to: the fair and honest verdict of 12 jurors regarding the charges against them,” she said.
Another panelist, Juror No. 7, Barbara Tomanelli, had allegedly allayed DeMarco’s concerns in 2009 by saying: “I understand how you feel. Don’t worry, they can afford an appeal.”
Marshall was recently denied permission to appeal to the state’s highest court to reconsider his sentence.
In a May letter to the Court of Appeals, the District Attorney’s Office stressed that Bartley had previously dismissed DeMarco’s concerns because she only “felt” threatened but there were no actual threats of violence.
In appeals, Marshall had argued that given his age, health, military service and lack of criminal history, he should be spared prison.
But the mid-level appeals court that considered his first appeal was not persuaded.
“We are not convinced that, as an aged felon, Marshall should be categorically immune from incarceration,” Justice Darcel Clark said in a March ruling.