Robert Morgenthau


Robert Morris Morgenthau was an American lawyer. From 1975 until his retirement in 2009, he was the District Attorney for New York County, having previously served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York throughout much of the 1960s on the appointment of John F. Kennedy. At retirement, Morgenthau was the longest-serving district attorney in the history of the State of New York, although William V. Grady of Dutchess County surpassed this record at the midway point of his ninth term on January 1, 2018.

Early life

Morgenthau was born in 1919 in New York City into a prominent Ashkenazi Jewish family that had emigrated from Baden in 1866. He was the son of Elinor and Henry Morgenthau Jr., who served as the Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman from 1934 until 1945. His maternal great-grandfather was Mayer Lehman, a co-founder of Lehman Brothers. His grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Sr., was United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Before going into diplomatic service, Henry Morgenthau Sr. had made a fortune in real estate, and became a strong financial backer of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson.
Morgenthau's paternal grandmother was born in Montgomery, Alabama.
From the boy's earliest days, the Morgenthau family was well-connected politically. The family home was near Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Springwood Estate at Hyde Park, New York, and he grew up knowing Roosevelt.
After graduating from the New Lincoln School, Deerfield Academy, and Amherst College, Morgenthau enlisted in the United States Navy, serving for four and a half years during World War II. He attained the final rank of lieutenant commander, and served as the executive officer of both the USS Lansdale and the USS Harry F. Bauer. Naval records indicate heroic action during the Battle of Iwo Jima – the Bauer was attacked by thirteen kamikazes, and survived a torpedo and dive bomber attack. He saw action in both the Mediterranean and Pacific theaters, mostly aboard destroyers.
After the war, Morgenthau studied law, graduating from Yale Law School in 1948. He joined the New York law firm of Patterson, Belknap & Webb, becoming a partner in 1954.

Career

U.S. Attorney

In 1961, after twelve years of practicing corporate law, Morgenthau accepted an appointment from President John F. Kennedy as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 1962, he was the Democratic nominee for Governor of New York, and resigned his federal office. After his defeat by the incumbent Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Morgenthau was reappointed U.S. Attorney and served in that position for the remainder of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
In January 1969, following the election of President Richard Nixon, Morgenthau remained in office, and for months resisted increasingly public pressures from the Nixon Administration to resign. He retained support from New York's liberal Republican U.S. Senators Jacob K. Javits and Charles Goodell. Morgenthau and his supporters claimed that replacing him would disrupt his work on vital cases, and that Nixon might be seeking to prevent Morgenthau from pursuing investigations that would prove embarrassing to the President or his friends. Nonetheless, Morgenthau's position became increasingly untenable. While well-regarded, he was after all a Democrat, thought to harbor political aspirations. Morgenthau's insistence on remaining in office seemed increasingly unreasonable. He was eventually forced out of office at the end of 1969. Republican Whitney North Seymour Jr. was appointed as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Return to politics

Afterward, Morgenthau served briefly in the reformist administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay as a deputy mayor, before resigning to seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 1970. Morgenthau was less successful in raising funds and developing support than were two other candidates, Arthur Goldberg and Howard Samuels, and within weeks, he withdrew from the race. Goldberg won the nomination, and was subsequently defeated by Rockefeller.

District Attorney of New York County

Morgenthau returned to private life until 1974, when he was elected to the office of District Attorney of New York County. This was a special election caused by the death of Frank Hogan, who had served as DA for more than 30 years. Morgenthau defeated Hogan's interim successor, Richard Kuh. He was elected to a full term in 1977, and was re-elected seven times. He was not opposed in a general election from 1985 to 2005.
Morgenthau was criticized in the press for his conduct in the wake of a major police corruption scandal. Eight men who were falsely arrested by New York City Transit Police officers in the scandal that shook the department were awarded more than $1 million in damages by a federal judge. One plaintiff, Ronald Yeadon, was a police officer. He was arrested twice while off duty and accused of sexually abusing a woman.
Morgenthau retained a national profile while serving in what was technically a local office, in part because of his dogged pursuit of white-collar crime. According to Gary Naftalis, a prominent Manhattan defense attorney who had been an assistant to Morgenthau in the 1960s, Morgenthau believed that prosecuting "crime in the suites" was every bit as important as prosecuting "crime in the streets".
At age 85 in 2005, Morgenthau announced that he would run for a ninth term as district attorney. For the first time in decades, he encountered a vigorous primary opponent – former state court judge Leslie Crocker Snyder.
Snyder won the endorsement of The New York Times, which, like virtually all of the city's establishment, had long supported Morgenthau.
Morgenthau won the Democratic primary with 59% of the vote, to Snyder's 41%. In the general election, he was once again the candidate for all political parties in the election, having been nominated by the Democrats, Republicans, and the Working Families Party. Morgenthau won re-election with more than 99% of the vote.

Retirement

On February 27, 2009, Morgenthau announced that he would not seek re-election in 2009, saying: "I never expected to be here this long... ecently, I figured that I'd served 25 years beyond the normal retirement age." He was succeeded in office by Cyrus Vance Jr., a prosecutor under Morgenthau and the son of former President Jimmy Carter's secretary of state Cyrus Vance. Morgenthau officially endorsed Vance on June 25. Vance went on to win the primary election on September 15, 2009 and the subsequent general election on November 3. On January 20, 2010, Morgenthau joined the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Selected cases

Cases over which Morgenthau presided include:
The character of District Attorney Adam Schiff, the New York district attorney in the long-running TV series Law & Order, was loosely based on Morgenthau. Morgenthau reportedly was a fan of the character.

Affiliations

Morgenthau's other principal civic activities were the Police Athletic League of New York City, which he served since 1962, first as president and then chairman, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, of which he was chairman.

Awards

In 2005, Morgenthau received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York". Morgenthau also received the Association Medal of the New York City Bar Association for exceptional contributions to the honor and standing of the bar in the city of New York.

Personal life

His first wife was Martha Pattridge, a Christian, whom he met in college; they had five children: Joan Morgenthau Wadsworth, Anne Pattridge Morgenthau Grand, Robert Pattridge Morgenthau, Elinor Gates Morgenthau, and Barbara Elizabeth Morgenthau Lee. They raised their children in the Jewish faith. Martha died in 1972. Morgenthau was devastated by her death, and for a while afterward, he refused to talk about her in order to avoid memories of her passing.
In 1977, he married Lucinda Franks, an author who in 1971 won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. She is also Christian. They had two children: Joshua Franks Morgenthau, and Amy Elinor Morgenthau. They lived in New York City. They remained married until his death and Franks survives him. His son Joshua runs the family farm, Fishkill Farms, founded by Henry Morgenthau Jr.

Death

Morgenthau died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on July 21, 2019 after a short illness. He was ten days shy of his 100th birthday.