Legal News

Astor Trial (Finally!) Heads to the Jury

By Ashby Jones

This, frankly, is why people fear jury duty.

The criminal trial of Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, and lawyer Francis Morrissey, is expected to get sent to the jury on Tuesday after 19 weeks of courtroom testimony and lawyer talk. That’s right, 19 weeks of talk over whether Marshall and Morrissey essentially swindled Astor out of millions during the waning days of her life. Astor died in 2007 at the age of 105. Click here for our “walk-up” post on the eve of the trial’s beginning, back in March (that’s right, March); here for a NYT article on the trial’s heading to the jury.

So why did the trial take so long? The NYT explains:

Prosecutors contend that Mr. Marshall committed theft by false pretenses by tricking his mother into agreeing to sell a Childe Hassam painting by making her think she was broke. Mr. Marshall ended up selling the painting for $10 million and keeping $2 million as a commission.

To support their contention, the prosecution presented witness after witness who testified that Mrs. Astor told them she could not buy things like dresses because her son told her she had no money. She was still worth tens of millions at the time, prosecutors have said.

"Everybody else tells her, 'Don't worry about it. You have. Spend,' " Joel J. Seidemann, an assistant district attorney, said in his closing statement. "Only her own flesh and blood takes advantage of this delusion."

Much of the jury’s deliberations could hinge on Astor's mental state in her waning years. It was a central topic throughout the trial.

Both men face charges of conspiracy and scheming to defraud. Mr. Marshall, 84, also faces a charges of first-degree grand larceny, the most serious counts on the indictment. A conviction on either count would mean that the judge, Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr., would have to send him to prison for at least a year. Marshall, 85, and Morrissey, 66, might not have to serve time behind bars if convicted on any other count.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 22, 2009 (boomark / email).