Brooke Astor's 86-year-old son doesn't want to go to prison for stealing from his mom - and he's using her words to try and reverse his blockbuster conviction.Anthony Marshall's lawyers filed an 89-page legal brief with a New York appeals court Monday [4/18/11]in an attempt to get his 2009 guilty verdict tossed.
Marshall, who is out on bail, was convicted of looting his famous mother's $185 million fortune so he could leave it to his wife, Charlene, who Astor despised.
He was sentenced to one to three years.
The appeal papers attempt to refute prosecutors' assertions at trial that Astor was so out of it by 2004 that she didn't know what she was doing when she signed money over to her son.
"Brooke told \[a member of her household staff\] that Mrs. Marshall would be a very rich woman one day," the papers state--suggesting that Astor was clear-headed at the time.
The beloved philanthropist was 105 when she died in 2007.
In the legal papers, defense lawyers John Cuti and Kenneth Warner seek to overturn the convictions of Marshall and his co-defendant, disbarred estate lawyer Francis Morrissey - and want the indictment lodged against them tossed out completely. "This trial resulted in a miscarriage of justice," the papers state.
The lawyers claim that sending "an old sick man" to prison is "out of all proportion to the offense, even assuming guilt." They called the crimes "relatively minor."
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Convicted Brooke Astor Son Anthony Marshall Fights to Overturn Guilty Verdict
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ReplyDeleteOf course, it's his right to appeal, but I am sorry that this whole thing can't be put to rest. Brooke Astor would not like being in the news again this way, I don't think.
ReplyDeleteLitigation will probably be ongoing even after Anthony Marshall's demise.
ReplyDeleteIf his lawyer helped him with forging the will, then they both belong in jail.
ReplyDeleteThe crimes, if he did them, were anything but "relatively minor."
ReplyDeleteI also have some sympathy for an old man. But, as Thelma said, I have no sympathy for the lawyer who helped with the forging of the will, etc.
The idea of the appeal is probably to keep him from going to jail. He's got enough money to keep the litigation going until he's gone. Smart move really.
ReplyDeleteThis guy is a fraud, the only people who support him are his fellow fakes, blowhards and sycophants at places like the (all-male) Knickerbocker and Brook Clubs; after all he's "society" and "one of us", we've known him all his life, "since school" (not university, natch). He probably is hoping he'll die before he goes to the crossbar hotel, but doesn't have the honor a "gentleman" would to admit his guilt and "eat his gun". What a waste.
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