JUDI DEMARCO Juror says she was intimidated.
REPRIEVE: Anthony Marshall and wife Charlene were able to stall the start of his prison stretch due to his health. (
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Anthony Marshall, convicted of stealing millions of dollars from his late socialite mom, Brooke Astor, has won his 11th-hour bid to dodge the start of his prison term Monday — because of deteriorating health.
A Manhattan judge and the district attorney agreed to the reprieve Thursday — the day before The Post exclusively reported that a juror had come forward to claim she was strong-armed by another panelist into convicting Marshall.
Marshall’s lawyers appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court yesterday to ask a judge to reverse his conviction based on juror Judi DeMarco’s sworn statement. The judge has yet to rule on that issue.
But the 89-year-old son of the New York doyenne at least gets to stay out of prison a few more days — until next Thursday — because of his ailing health. He was supposed to turn himself in at 10 a.m. Monday to start serving a sentence of 1 1/3 to 3 years for helping to forge Astor’s signature on her 2004 will.
“The change of date was made because of a review of medical records,” a source told The Post yesterday.
Marshall suffers from Parkinson’s disease and requires 24-hour care.
“I am relieved,” his wife, Charlene, told The Post by phone as she served her hubby breakfast in their Upper East Side co-op yesterday.
“He’s a very sick man,” she said, “an invalid.”
Earlier, Charlene Marshall was spotted on the street with a copy of yesterday’s Post, with her husband’s photo on the front page, in her hand.
DeMarco, a lawyer, is claiming that she was coerced into convicting Marshall and Astor’s attorney, Francis X. Morrissey, 72, during the 2009 criminal trial.
“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 a 10-page sworn affidavit.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice A. Kirke Bartley agreed to hear arguments Monday morning on the motion the defendants’ lawyers filed asking for a new trial based on her statement.
DeMarco said she was threatened by another juror, former TV producer Yvonne Fernandez, who allegedly made “menacing hand gestures” and “had to be physically restrained and removed from the courtroom.”
Fernandez’s lawyer, Ronald Kuby, said that DeMarco’s allegations were disputed by 11 jurors at the time of the alleged incident.
“The threats Ms. DeMarco claims exist only in her head,” Kuby sniped.
Morrissey is still scheduled to surrender for his one-to-three-year prison term Monday, said his lawyer, William Zabel.
The District Attorney’s Office is expected to argue Monday that the conviction should stand.