Robert Morgenthau, longest-serving Manhattan DA, dies at 99

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Robert Morgenthau, longest-serving Manhattan DA, dies at 99

2019-07-22 12:14 Last Updated At：12:20

Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, who spent more than three decades jailing criminals from mob kingpins and drug-dealing killers to a tax-dodging Harvard dean, died Sunday. He was 99, just 10 days short of his 100th birthday.

Morgenthau died at Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital after a short illness, his wife Lucinda Franks told The New York Times.

Morgenthau, who served as U.S. Attorney for New York's southern district during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, returned to law enforcement as Manhattan's top state prosecutor in 1974 and didn't leave for 35 years, with his office handling around 100,000 criminal cases yearly.

In 2005, at age 86, Morgenthau was elected for the eighth and last time, turning back a challenge from Leslie Crocker Snyder, a popular former state judge. Snyder tried without success to turn Morgenthau's age and lengthy tenure into campaign issues.

Morgenthau left office in 2009, throwing his support to his eventual successor, Cy Vance.

At the time, he told The Associated Press he was retiring because "I looked at my birth certificate, and I said, 'It's about time.'"

In his position at the forefront of Manhattan's legal and political scene, Morgenthau cultivated a dignified, above-the-fray presence, and was widely acknowledged by allies and foes alike as effective, nonpartisan and incorruptible.

From that emerged a national reputation that extended beyond the courthouse. Tall and distinguished in appearance, he was the model for the avuncular character of prosecutor Adam Schiff, played by actor Steven Hill on the long-running television series, "Law & Order."

Show creator Dick Wolf called Morgenthau "the greatest district attorney in the history of New York."

Under Morgenthau's watch, Manhattan prosecutors took on many high-profile cases: political payoffs by mob boss Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo, the shooting of four black youths by white subway gunman Bernhard Goetz, the weapons-possession arrest of hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs.

Over the years, Morgenthau's office also prosecuted mob boss John Gotti, acquitted on state charges of ordering a hit on a union official, and former Tyco CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski, convicted of fraud and larceny in a case seen as an emblem of corporate excess. The office also produced guilty pleas from "Preppie Killer" Robert Chambers Jr. and John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman.

Morgenthau, who had claimed a 97% conviction rate while U.S. attorney, lost the Combs case, but in the late 1990s, his state DA's office was winning guilty verdicts in three of four cases.

However, Morgenthau insisted that convictions weren't everything.

"The prosecutor's job is to protect the public and to administer the laws," Morgenthau once said, deriding district attorneys who collected convictions like "notches on a gun."

That premise was put to the test in the Central Park jogger case, one of the most sensational prosecutions handled by his office. Thirteen years after a female jogger was attacked in the infamous gang "wilding" spree, Morgenthau asked a judge in 2002 to throw out the convictions of five men because DNA evidence and another man's confession put them into question.

Morgenthau was born into a wealthy, prominent New York family. His grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Sr., was U.S. ambassador to Turkey during World War I, and his father, Henry Morgenthau Jr., was secretary of the treasury under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a family friend.

His childhood reflected his lineage. Morgenthau had a lifelong friendship with members of the Kennedy clan; he once cooked hot dogs with Eleanor Roosevelt for Great Britain's King George VI; on another occasion he prepared a mint julep for Winston Churchill.

He joined the U.S. Navy one day after graduating Amherst College in 1941 and spent 4 ½ years in the service during World War II, earning the rank of lieutenant commander while seeing action aboard destroyers in the Mediterranean and the Pacific.

After the war, Morgenthau earned a law degree from Yale and joined a New York law firm headed by former U.S. secretary of war Robert P. Patterson.

In 1960, Morgenthau campaigned in New York for his friend and fellow Democrat, John F. Kennedy. The next year, the new president named him to the prestigious post of U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the nation's busiest such office.

Morgenthau resigned after 17 months to run for governor against incumbent Republican Nelson Rockefeller. After his defeat in a disastrous campaign in 1962, Morgenthau was reappointed federal prosecutor by Kennedy.

Morgenthau developed a reputation for targeting white-collar criminals. In 1963, his office successfully prosecuted former Harvard law school dean James M. Landis for tax evasion. More than 40 years later, as state district attorney he convicted Kozlowski and a subordinate for looting Tyco of $600 million.

Morgenthau was forced out as federal prosecutor in January 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon after months of resisting political pressure to resign. He briefly joined Mayor John Lindsay's administration as a deputy mayor, then waged another losing gubernatorial race before leaving the public eye for the next four years, engaged in private law practice.

In 1974, Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan resigned due to health problems after 32 years on the job. Morgenthau then launched his first successful run for public office.

Over the next quarter-century, Morgenthau was elected another seven times as head of one of the nation's largest law offices, with 550 prosecutors and 700 other staffers. Among prominent figures who served in the office was the late John F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Snyder, who ran against him in 2005.

Snyder mounted a vigorous campaign in which she pointed out that "Law & Order" had three district attorneys in 17 years on the air whereas Morgenthau had served alone for 30. The New York Times agreed that "three decades is more than enough time for any executive to accomplish his or her mission," but that endorsement did not help Snyder overcome his advantage at the polls.

In addition to jailing Goetz in the 1984 wounding of four black youths who tried to rob him on a subway train, Morgenthau's notable convictions included a crack dealer who murdered the son of AOL Time-Warner head Gerald Levin; the murderous mother-and-son grifter team, Sante and Kenneth Kimes Jr.; and seven youths who killed a Utah tourist in a subway mugging in 1990.

His civic work included a relationship with the Police Athletic League that dates to 1962, and his position as chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which opened in 1997.

He collected a variety of awards and honors, including the Citation of Merit from Yale Law School and the Thomas Jefferson Award in Law from the University of Virginia.

Morgenthau was survived by his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Lucinda Franks, and seven children. His first wife, the former Martha Pattridge, died of cancer in 1972.

Former Associated Press writer Larry McShane contributed to this report.

Venice tests a 5-euro entry fee for day-trippers as the Italian city grapples with overtourism

2024-04-26 00:14 Last Updated At：00:20

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Under the gaze of the world’s media, the fragile lagoon city of Venice launched a pilot program Thursday to charge day-trippers a 5-euro ($5.35) entry fee that authorities hope will discourage visitors from arriving on peak days and make the city more livable for its dwindling residents.

Visitors arriving at Venice's main train station were greeted with large signs listing the 29 dates through July of the plan's test phase that also designated separate entrances for tourists, and residents, students and workers.

“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’’ said Simone Venturini, the city’s top tourism official. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”

Not all residents, however, are persuaded of the efficacy of the new system in dissuading mass tourism, insisting that only a resurgence in the population will restore balance to a city where narrow alleyways and water buses are often clogged with tourists.

Hundreds of Venetians protested against the program, marching festively though the city's main bus terminal behind banners reading “No to Tickets, Yes to Services and Housing.” Protesters scuffled briefly with police with riot gear who blocked them from entering the city, before changing course and entering over another bridge escorted by plainclothes police officers. The demonstration wrapped up peacefully in a piazza.

Tourists arriving at the main station encountered almost as many journalists as stewards on hand to politely guide anyone unaware of the new requirements through the process of downloading the QR code to pay the fee.

Arianna Cecilia, a tourist from Rome visiting Venice for the first time, said she thought it was “strange” to have to pay to enter a city in her native country, and be funneled through separate entrance ways for tourists. She and her boyfriend were staying in nearby Treviso, and so downloaded the QR code as required. But she was still caught off-guard while soaking in her first view ever of Venice's canals by the sight of the entrance signs and her boyfriend telling her to get out the ticket.

On the other side of the entrance ways, workers in yellow vests carried out random checks at the train station. Transgressors face fines of 50 to 300 euros ($53 to $320), but officials said “common sense” was being applied for the launch.

The requirement applies only for people arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outside of those hours, access is free and unchecked.

Venice has long suffered under the pressure of overtourism, and officials hope that the pilot project can help provide more exact figures to better manage the phenomenon.

The city can track the number of hotel visitors, which last year numbered 4.6 million and is down 16% from pre-pandemic highs. But the number of day visitors, which make up the majority of the crowds in Venice, could only be estimated until recently.

A Smart Control Room set up during the pandemic has been tracking arrivals from cellphone data, roughly confirming pre-pandemic estimates of 25 million to 30 million arrivals a year, said Michele Zuin, the city’s top economic official. That includes both day-trippers and overnight guests.

But Zuin said the data is incomplete.

“It’s clear we will get more reliable data from the contribution” being paid by day-trippers, he said.

Venturini said the city is strained when the number of day-trippers reaches 30,000 to 40,000. On peak days, local police set up one-way traffic for pedestrians to keep the crowds moving.

Residents opposing the day-tripper tax insist that the solution to Venice's woes are to boost the resident population and the services they need, limiting short-term rentals to make available more housing and attract families back from the mainland.

Last year, Venice passed a telling milestone when the number of tourist beds exceeded for the first time the number of official residents, which is now below 50,000 in the historic center with its picturesque canals.

“Putting a ticket to enter a city will not decrease not even by one single unit the number of visitors that are coming,’’ said Tommaso Cacciari, an activist who organized a protest Thursday against the measure.

“You pay a ticket to take the metro, to go to a museum, an amusement park. You don’t pay a ticket to enter a city. This is the last symbolic step of a project of an idea of this municipal administration to kick residents out of Venice,” he said.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro declared the launch day, coinciding with an Italian holiday, a success, registering 15,700 paying visitors, 50% more than anticipated.

More than 97,000 others had downloaded a QR code denoting an exemption, including to work in Venice or as a resident of the Veneto region. Hotels in Venice, including in mainland districts like Marghera or Mestre, provided a QR code for visitors to attest to their stay, which includes a hotel tax — accounting for 40,000 of those.

Venturini, the tourist official, said that interest in Venice’s pilot program has been keen from other places suffering from mass tourism, including other Italian art cities, and municipalities abroad such as Barcelona, Spain, and Amsterdam.

But Marina Rodino, who has lived in Venice for 30 years, doesn't see the fee as the cure-all. Neighboring apartments in her residential building near the famed Rialto Bridge once inhabited by families are now short-term apartment rentals.

The corner butcher shop closed. Yet she noted that the new entrance fee requirement will still allow young people to flood the city in the evening for the traditional aperitivo, which can grow rowdy.

She was passing out mock European Union passports for “Venice, Open City,” underlining the irony of the new system, and challenging its legal standing with citations from the Italian Constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to “move or reside freely in any part of the national territory."

“This is not a natural oasis. This is not a museum. It is not Pompeii. It is a city, where we need to fight so the houses are inhabited by families, and stores reopen. That is what would counter this wild tourism,’’ Rodino said.