Robert M. Morgenthau

Robert Morgenthau, with four decades of public service as the top federal and state prosecutor in Manhattan, died Sunday at age 99.

Marty Lipton of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where Morgenthau was of counsel, said he became sick about a week ago and died from his illness. The New York Times reported that his wife Lucinda Franks said he died at Lenox Hill Hospital.

While Morgenthau's handling of some cases drew controversy, his time as Manhattan's district attorney was widely praised by prominent figures in the New York legal world. Crime in New York City fell drastically during his tenure and his office “became the gold standard for any young lawyer who wanted to learn the legal craft,” said Robert Katzmann, who is chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, when presenting an award to Morgenthau earlier this year.

Morgenthau was elected as the New York County district attorney in 1974 at a trying time for New York City. Crime was on the rise, white flight was in full swing, and the city's population was slipping after having peaked in 1970.

Central Park Five prosecutor Linda Fairstein with Morgenthau at a news conference in 1988. (AP Photo/Charles Wenzelberg)

While crime eventually fell to historic lows, the tide was slow to turn, and Morgenthau was elected time and time again—often unopposed—to lead the DA's office in the decades that followed. He enjoyed widespread public support, but was not immune to criticism. He served long enough as district attorney to express regret over his office's handling of the Central Park jogger case, where five young, nonwhite men who were accused of assaulting a jogger had their convictions vacated.

On Morgenthau's watch, Manhattan prosecutors handled 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, who was acquitted on state charges of ordering a hit on a union official, and former Tyco CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski, who was 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.

In the late 1990s, his state DA's office was winning guilty verdicts in three of four cases. He was the model for DA Adam Schiff on the TV series “Law & Order.”

Morgenthau, who would have been 100 later this month, went to work for Wachtell after leaving office at the end of 2009. He estimated that he oversaw 3.5 million cases in a recent interview with the New York Law Journal.

Lipton, who said he knew Morgenthau since 1956, said the former prosecutor mentored young lawyers at Wachtell after joining as of-counsel. He and his firm hailed Morgenthau for his military service during World War II and for his continued public stands on causes including immigration and gun control after his retirement.

“I knew him as a very concerned person, not just about law enforcement, but about the issues that affect our society,” Lipton said. “He was a voice for reason. He was a voice for democracy. And he was a great patriot.”

Morgenthau, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, with Attorney General Robert Kennedy on the steps of the federal courthouse in New York City on June 14, 1961. (AP Photo)

Morgenthau's career in law began well before he was elected DA. He worked in private practice before being appointed the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1961, serving under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He ran unsuccessfully for governor of New York in 1962 and 1970.

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.

Ultimately he was forced out as a federal prosecutor in January 1970 by President Richard Nixon.

Ira Lee “Ike” Sorkin, a partner at Mintz & Gold who served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York in the years after Morgenthau resigned, said he remembered hearing from colleagues that the Nixon administration went so far as to cut off the office's supplies of paper, pencils and notepads in order to pressure Morgenthau to step down.

“It got to the point that Morgenthau finally said, 'I'm not going to hurt this office,' and he resigned,” Sorkin said.

After serving briefly as deputy mayor and making another abortive run for governor, Morgenthau worked for several years as a solo practitioner. In 1974, he defeated Richard Kuh in a special election for Manhattan district attorney.

Morgenthau is sworn in for his first term as Manhatttan District Attorney on Jan. 2, 1975. (File photo)

Undaunted by fiscal pressures, Morgenthau immediately began a reorganization of the office that he has said has played a crucial role in plunging crime rates. He was able to recruit assistants who would aggressively but not arrogantly pursue cases “without fear or favor,” according to a 2009 profile of Morgenthau appearing in the New York Law Journal.

“My general view is that you hire people who are intelligent but also committed to public service,” he was quoted in 2009. “Then you give them maximum support and the maximum free hand to let them go out and do their job. An office is as good as its staff. Simple as that.”

New York criminal defense attorney Benjamin Brafman, who was an assistant under Morgenthau from 1976 to 1980, said serving in his office was a “defining characteristic” for any prosecutor. He was known as “the quintessential prosecutor who went out of his way to try and hire the best of the best, and having his name on your resume is a wonderful credential, even now so many years later,” Brafman said.

Prominent figures who served in Morgenthau's DA Office include the late John F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Leslie Crocker Snyder, a popular former state judge who ran against him in 2005.

Thomas Curran, who leads Peckar & Abramson's white-collar practice and worked as an assistant district attorney from 1995 to 2001, said he was “profoundly grateful” to have had the chance to serve in Morgenthau's office.

As the presiding member of the Manhattan District Attorney's Association, Curran continued to work with Morgenthau after leaving government service, and said the former DA was proud of the successes of his office's alumni and the impact they had at the law firms, companies and chambers where they worked.

“There's never been anybody quite like him, period,” he said. “We did things the right way. He lived the words that it was our job to enforce the law without fear or favor, from Park Avenue to the park bench.”

On Monday morning, tributes poured in from top elected officials and prosecutors.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said his tenure in the office “sparked a paradigm shift among his prosecutorial peers that emphasized proactive strategies, diverse hires, and increased community engagement.” Vance said his record “made him the most respected prosecutor of his generation and a hallowed figure among the 2,000 prosecutors he hired.”

Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, hailed his predecessor as “extraordinary” in a statement, noting he created the Securities Fraud Unit. Berman said Morgenthau also helped establish the framework for “sophisticated, international investigations that still guides our career prosecutors.”

“Whether he was charging landmark public corruption or organized crime cases, Mr. Morgenthau worked tirelessly to instill public confidence in the integrity of the office,” Berman said. “Every day as I enter my office I pass a portrait of Mr. Morgenthau and I am inspired by his lifelong dedication to public service and the law.”

Preet Bharara, who preceded Berman as the Southern District's top prosecutor, said on Twitter that the news was “terribly sad,” and hailed Morgenthau as an “unparalleled patriot, veteran, prosecutor [and] public servant.”

Katzmann called Morgenthau this year “a personal hero,” while presenting him the John J. McCloy Memorial Award of the Fund for Modern Courts. “His devotion to public service and to the public good an inspiration. It is no exaggeration to say that there is no one in the history of this nation who has done more over a lifetime to serve the public than he,” Katzmann said.

Michael Bloomberg, whose tenure as New York City's mayor overlapped with Morgenthau's later years as DA, said in a statement that the prosecutor “played a central role in bringing crime down to historic lows,” and “was as tough on those who carried guns as he was on those who wore pinstriped suits.”

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

He joined the U.S. Navy one day after graduating from Amherst College in 1941 and spent four-and-a-half 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, Robert Morgenthau earned a law degree from Yale. He worked as a corporate litigator for 12 years at the firm now known as Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler.

“I always intended to do government service,” Morgenthau said, according to a 2009 profile. “But I found out that everywhere I went I was my father's son, so I figured that I had to establish my own reputation. I also thought it was important to have a profession so if I didn't like what my boss was doing in the government, I could say, 'Goodbye, I'm going back to private practice.'”

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.