Robert M Morgenthau

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 is the son of Elinor (née Fatman) and long-time Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. 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 then became a strong financial backer of President Woodrow Wilson. His paternal grandmother was born in Montgomery, Alabama. From his 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, he 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. He saw action in both the Mediterranean and Pacific theaters, mostly aboard destroyers. Morgenthau graduated from Yale Law School in 1948, and joined the New York law firm of Patterson, Belknap & Webb, becoming a partner in 1954.

U.S. Attorney

In 1961, after 12 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 for the remainder of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. As a United States Attorney, Morgenthau established a special unit to investigate securities fraud and prosecuted highly publicized bribery cases against city officials and IRS attorneys and accountants.

In January 1969, following the election of President Richard M. 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, thus Morgenthau's insistence on remaining in office seemed increasingly unreasonable to even some who initially had thought the Nixon administration should not show him the door so quickly. He was eventually forced out of office at the end of 1969 and succeeded as U.S. Attorney by Republican Whitney North Seymour, Jr.

Return to politics

Afterwards, 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 subjected to criticism in the press for his conduct in the wake of a major police corruption scandal. Eight men who were falsely arrested by 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."

Morgenthau announced in 2005, aged 85, that he would run for a ninth full 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 been supportive of 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 ... [R]ecently I figured that I'd served 25 years beyond the normal retirement age." He was replaced 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.

Notable cases

Notable assistant district attorneys under Morgenthau

Television character

The character of District Attorney Adam Schiff (played by actor Steven Hill), 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.

Award

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, whom he met in college; they had five children: Joan Morgenthau; Anne Pattridge Morgenthau; Robert Pattridge Morgenthau; Elinor Gates Morgenthau, and Barbara Elizabeth Morgenthau. His wife died in 1972. In 1977, he married Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lucinda Franks, a Christian. They have two children: Joshua Franks Morgenthau (born 1984) and Amy Elinor Morgenthau (born 1990). They live in New York City. His son Joshua runs the family farm, Fishkill Farms, founded by Henry Morgenthau, Jr.