A legend leaves office

Volume 22, Number 35 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | January 8 - 14, 2010

Downtown Express photos by J.B. Nicholas

On Dec. 31, Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan district attorney for the last 35 years, left the D.A.’s 1 Hogan Place office the last time as the borough’s top lawman. Among the high-profile cases Morgenthau, 90, oversaw were the prosecutions of “Preppie Killer” Robert Chambers; Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s murderer; and Dennis Kozlowski, the former Tyco C.E.O. convicted of fleecing his company of more than $150 million. In addition, Morgenthau oversaw the charges stemming from the fatal 2007 Deutsche Bank fire. In December 2008, he charged three Deutsche construction supervisors and subcontractor John Galt Corp. with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the deaths of the two firefighters who were killed. Morgenthau decided not to charge the city in the oversight failures leading up to the fire, though he considered doing so and upset Mayor Mike Bloomberg in the process. There were also several notable wrongful convictions during Morgenthau’s tenure: Five men served more than 10 years jail time in connection with the “Central Park Jogger” rape before their sentences were vacated in 2002; a pair of men spent 14 years behind bars for the 1990 murder of a bouncer at the Palladium dance club on E. 14th St. before it was proven another man had shot the victim; and Fernando Bermudez, just recently released, was unjustly imprisoned 18 years for a 1991 murder on 13th St. stemming from a fight at the nearby Marc Ballroom. “Morgy” was also the model for the district attorney for the first 10 years on the TV show “Law & Order.”