THE ROBBER WORE A ROBE
Top judge goes to jail for shakedowns
THOUGH BORN of raggedy roots, Martin Manton had a profound conviction that he was destined to become a king of American courts.
Manton grew up in Brooklyn in the 1880s in a poor but striving Irish immigrant family.
He excelled as a scholar and entered Columbia Law School while still a teen. He stood out among mansion-raised classmates and became a founder of the school’s law review in 1901, his graduation year.
At age 21, Manton hung out a shingle in his home borough but soon dove into Manhattan’s churning lawyer stew, joining the firm of W. Bourke Cockran, an Irishman, congressman and political wire-puller.
He married in 1907, and he and his wife adopted two children. Meanwhile, Manton built a thriving practice and a gilded reputation as a litigator.
He was a tall, ruddy man with a flinty disposition and a withering glower that he used like a weapon in court.
On the side, Manton began to dabble in the Queens land rush after it was annexed into the city in 1898. Improvements in bridges and rail service spurred a population spike, from 150,000 in 1900 to a million by 1930. They needed somewhere to live, and Manton capitalized with his real estate development firms, including the Forest Hills Terrace Corp.
In 1916, still just 36 years old, Manton realized a dream when Rep. Cockran prevailed upon President Woodrow Wilson to appoint his protégé a federal district court judge in New York. He was promoted two years later to the presti-
gious 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, a notch below the U.S. Supreme Court.
Manton was a millionaire before age 40, although he earned just $10,000 a year as a judge. Eyebrows elevated over that arithmetic. In 1922, he was on a short listed for a high court seat but lost out in part by gossip about his real estate transactions.
The judge, who split time between a waterfront manor in Bayport, Long Island, and ritzy East Side digs at the Hotel Madison, couldn’t be faulted for shirking work. He wrote about 650 opinions during his career, nearly 30 a year.
As the 1920s wore on, Manton gained seniority that gave him unofficial status as chief judge of the 2nd Circuit. Described as a “dominating figure,” he often lectured about integrity and ethics.
“Nothing can take the place of that commodity called an honest lawyer,” he said.
The comment gained pertinence after the judge took a financial hit in the 1929 stock market crash.
Queens real estate values tumbled. He had a $1.8 million mortgage on 200 acres under development in Jackson Heights — one of many heavy debts he carried. He sought crisis loans at many banks and managed to negotiate down some debt.
Five years after the crash, he was solvent again. Over 11 months in 1934 and ’35, his net worth miraculously went from $500,000 in the red to $750,000 in the black — a $1.25 million turnaround.
Reporter Burton Heath began birddogging the judge’s financial reversal.
In January 1939, the New York WorldTelegram published a series of Heath’s Pulitzer Prize-winning articles revealing that Judge Manton had for years been collecting “loans” — $664,000 in all — from parties in business disputes on his docket.
“Hasn’t a judge the right to buy stocks and bonds?” Manton asked.
But within days, Manton was arrested, and FDR relieved the judge of his gavel.
It was a stunning scandal — the first (and only) time that a federal judge had faced substantive allegations of bribery.
Two bag men, Billy Fallon and James Sullivan, wrung the bribe-payers and pocketed a slice. They were not subtle. As Fallon told one mark, “The judge is in bad circumstances. . . and wanted to know if he could get $10,000 as quickly as possible.”
The boodle often keyed on business-to-business patent disputes before Manton: $50,000 from Warner Bros. Pictures, $60,000 from a Connecticut chicken farmer, $77,000 from Dictograph Products Corp.
John Lotsch of Fort Greene National Bank in Brooklyn was squeezed for $37,500. Lord & Thomas, a prestigious ad firm, coughed up $250,000 on behalf of American Tobacco Co.
The evidence was emphatic at Manton’s federal trial in May 1939, including testimony that Manton’s dragoons ordered firms to pay up — or the other side would.
“Here was a man with a fortune . . . who had been given the right and authority to judge his fellow men,” said prosecutor John Cahill. “And he could not control his greed for money.”
Manton was convicted and sentenced to the meager maximum: two years and a $10,000 fine.
He stood in court and recited a 16-page bluster.
“In the name of the law, a judge has been struck down to what is tantamount to a death sentence,” Manton bawled. “Reputation has been destroyed largely by a hostile press. Life itself seems shattered. But, thank God, character cannot thus be destroyed.”
He left Foley Square in tears, did his time in Lewisburg, Pa., then retreated to Syracuse, where he died five years later at age 66.
One legal historian wrote, “The outstanding example of dishonesty on the federal bench is found in the life of Martin Manton.” He has another legacy. Manton was a prominent Catholic in New York. The street fronting Archbishop Molloy High School and an adjacent playground in Briarwood, Queens, bear his name.