NEW YORK — Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan’s district attorney since 1974, announced Friday that he won’t run for re-election this year, saying “enough is enough” after decades of locking up murderous mobsters, corrupt CEOs and thousands of other criminals.
Morgenthau, who will turn 90 in July, not only has been at the job since President Gerald Ford was in office, but he was the bustling borough’s top federal prosecutor under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
“Some people are slow to learn,” he said. “It took me a long time to realize I was getting older.”
His wife was by his side at a news conference, often repeating questions from reporters because he is hard of hearing. But he was upbeat, pondering life as a retiree.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” Morgenthau said. “I got an e-mail from my older brother, who said this is a bad time to be looking for a job.”
Morgenthau said the nation’s busiest and most prominent district attorney’s office has seen nearly 3.5 million cases in the 35 years he has led it.
Morgenthau cultivated a dignified, above-the-fray presence and was widely acknowledged by allies and foes alike as effective, nonpartisan and incorruptible. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly called him “an icon” and a “legend.”
Tall and distinguished, Morgenthau was the model for the original prosecutor on “Law and Order,” the long-running TV drama that features fictionalized versions of cases handled by his office.
Morgenthau prosecuted notables from John Gotti to Sean Combs to Boy George, and he hired young lawyers such as John F. Kennedy Jr., Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo to work as assistant prosecutors.
Morgenthau was born in 1919 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.
