By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — Astor heir Anthony Marshall should serve between 1 1/2 and 4 1/2 years in prison, prosecutors recommended at a sentencing hearing for the 85-year-old war veteran Monday.
"The defendant's economic and social standing shouldn't put him above the herd," Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann told the court.
"He shouldn't be treated any different than a common thief."
A Manhattan judge will decide Monday how long Marhall should serve after a jury found him guilty of pilfering his socialite mother Brooke Astor's estate in her dying days.
As well as asking the judge to send the ailing heir to the big house, Seidemann requested that he insist on $12.3 million restitution.
"If it can happen to Brooke Russell Astor, your honor...what happens to the rest of the elderly in New York and the United States?" Seidemann said.
The top charge Marshall was convicted on carries a minimum punishment of one year in prison, but his attorneys are vigorously opposed to incarceration for the World War II veteran who is reportedly in poor health.
The defense argued prison conditions could kill Marshall, who had heart surgery recently and walks slowly with the aid of a cane.
Marshall's car pulled into the only snow-cleared spot on the side of the court house and then he and his wife, Charlene, and his lawyer walked slowly up the handicapped ramp as a throng of photographers and TV crews mobbed him.
Marshall was convicted of stealing millions from his socialite Brooke Astor's fortune as her health deteriorated because of advanced Alzheimer's disease. Prosecutors said he took control of her nearly $200 million estate against her wishes.
Attorney Francis Morrissey, 66, is also up for sentencing. Morrissey was charged with executing a plot to fake Astor's signature on the last amendment to her will before her death in 2007.
