Spencer Platt/Getty Anthony D. Marshall left court Manhattan after his sentencing on Monday.

A judge has sentenced Anthony D. Marshall, only child of the late philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor, to one to three years in prison for looting his mother’s fortune as she slipped into the confusion of Alzheimer’s disease.

“What would she say if she were here?” Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr. demanded in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Mrs. Astor died at age 105 in 2007. “Would she blanch at the spectacle?”

Mr. Marshall’s lawyers had sought to avoid prison for their 85-year-old client, arguing that he is in poor health and that any jail time could amount to a life sentence. “He’s not someone who stuck his hand in the cookie jar while no one was looking,” his lawyer said in court. Read more…

Louis Lanzano/AP Anthony Marshall and wife Charlene exit a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday after his conviction on charges of defrauding his mother, the late socialite Brooke Astor.

During the long months of testimony in the Astor trial, as the courtroom emptied of spectators and the headlines shrank, prosecutors and other professionals involved in elder abuse cases were still paying close attention. In fact, some were biting their fingernails, especially as the jury’s deliberations grew heated and stretched to 12 days.

“I’ve been very worried about it,” confessed Lori Stiegel, senior attorney at the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging. If the prosecutors, including the head of the Manhattan District Attorney’s pioneering elder abuse unit, had failed to win a conviction, she said, “it could have been perceived as reinforcing the notion that these cases are just too difficult to bring and that juries will have trouble understanding the issues.”

Around the country, a growing number of district attorneys’ offices — Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Brooklyn — have set up elder abuse units on the theory that specialization can help them uncover and fight these particularly thorny cases. (Manhattan’s unit, dating to 1992, is among the oldest.)

Those prosecutors “had to be pretty nervous about this trial,” said Thomas Hafemeister, a University of Virginia law professor who researches elder abuse and law enforcement. “If there’d been a verdict for the defendant, you’d see people more hesitant about going down this path.” Read more…

Anthony D. Marshall, the 85-year-old son of Brooke Astor, the legendary New York society matriarch, was convicted on Thursday of stealing from her as she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in the twilight of her life. Barring an appeal, the jury’s verdict means that Mr. Marshall can be sentenced to anywhere from one to 25 years behind bars. Read the full story.

Anthony Marshall, the son of the late socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor, has spent months in a Manhattan courtroom hearing himself portrayed in stark contrasts. Either he is a devoted son whose mother wanted to bestow on him an even bigger share of her estate than he would already have received, or he is a “depraved” exploiter, in the words of prosecutors, who used an elderly woman with dementia “as his own little piggy bank, his own A.T.M.”

Like the rest of the Astor trial, which began in April, closing arguments took longer than forecast, at one point becoming so contentious that Mr. Marshall, 85, trembled and leaned on a railing behind his chair for support.

But after instructions from the judge, the case will quite likely go to the jury today. Deliberations will proceed relatively quickly, predicted Thomas Hafemeister, a University of Virginia Law School professor who studies elder abuse and also decision-making by jurors. “I think there will be a lot of internal peer pressure to quickly reach a verdict so that they can all go home,” Professor Hafemeister said in an e-mail message. “By most accounts, this has been a very lengthy and pretty tedious trial that the jurors are probably very eager to see end.” Read more…

John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times Anthony and Charlene Marshall outside a Manhattan courtroom on Monday.

Remember the Astor trial? The ongoing case raised questions about whether noted philanthropist Brooke Astor, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, understood what she was doing when she changed her will in 2004, diverting millions that had long been promised to charities to her son, Anthony Marshall. Allegations also arose that her son and a co-defendant — charged with conspiracy, fraud, larceny and forgery — manipulated a confused centenarian into parting with her treasured $10 million painting.

The trial has lasted 18 weeks, twice as long as the judge originally estimated, but closing arguments finally began in a downtown Manhattan courtroom today. They’re expected to continue through Wednesday.

Headlines heralded the trial’s start last spring. Spectators, eager to see celebrity witnesses like Barbara Walters and Henry Kissinger and intrigued by the backstage glimpses into the life of a New York icon, crowded the courtroom.

Those of us who pay attention to issues affecting older Americans were fascinated, too, as alleged financial exploitation of the elderly — an abuse that also plays out among ordinary families in ordinary towns — got a national spotlight. Read more…