There’ll be no easy out for Tony.
A Manhattan judge this morning refused a request by Brooke Astor’s swindling son to dismiss his October conviction for stealing millions of dollars from the Alzheimer’s-stricken philanthropist.
The son, Anthony Marshall, had claimed that one of the jurors told his defense investigators she’d been “coerced” and “threatened” into voting to convict.
But the juror — one-time pro-acquittal hold-out Judi DeMarco, a legislative researcher for Mayor Bloomberg’s communications company — has also insisted that she “did ultimately what I felt was the right thing” in comments she made the day after the verdict in a Bloomberg.com article.
“As much as I wanted to find the man innocent, this was a criminal case and there were mounds and mounds of evidence,” DeMarco had written in the online publication, which was quoted from at length in the 22-page decision.
In siding with the DA’s office, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley also noted that DeMarco ultimately refused to sign an affadavit swearing to what she’d said to the defense investigator about the so-called “coercion.”
“As an attorney and former Assistant Attorney General, she was no doubt aware of the gravity of her oath,” the judge wrote in a not-so-veiled slam at the furor-causing juror, calling her a “conflicted” woman who has repeatedly vacillated on the public record over Marshall’s fate.
Defense lawyers had countered that DeMarco had described the “coercion” in a juror note three days before the verdict. The note had stated, “Due to a heated argument, a juror feels personally threatened by comments made by another juror.”
DeMarco ultimately refused to swear out a post-verdict statement for fear of “a media frenzy,” the defense had argued.
But the judge noted that all 11 other jurors have sworn out statements saying the holdout juror’s claims of intimidation are bogus.
And as for DeMarco’s purported fear of “a media frenzy, he wrote, “It would appear that either Ms. DeMarco is placing her own privacy concerns over her purported belief that a terrible injustice has occurred, or, as this Court believes, that her verdict was in fact based on the evidence and the court’s instructions, and she does not now wish to engage in perjury.”
The judge made a point of mentioning DeMarco’s accused antagonist — fellow juror Yvonne Fernandez — as having not committed any improprieties during deliberations.
DeMarco had claimed that Fernandez threateningly “flashed” gang signs and made references to the Latin Kings.
The judge’s decision also upholds the conviction of Marshall’s co-defendant, disgraced estates lawyer Francis Morrissey. The jury had already voted to convict Morrissey of helping Marshall rip off his mother by the time the juror-furor erupted, the judge noted.
Marshall and Morrissey remain free pending the disposition of their yet-filed appeals with the state Appellate Division — a process that could take years.