Jerry Rosenberg, who was spared the death penalty for the 1962 murders of two New York City police detectives, and who became a pioneering jailhouse lawyer and a legal adviser for the leaders of the Attica prison uprising in 1971, died on Monday at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, N.Y. He was 72, and the state’s longest-serving inmate at his death.
Mr. Rosenberg, who was admitted to the prison’s medical unit in 2000, died of natural causes, according to a spokesman for the State Department of Correctional Services, who said he could not provide further details because of privacy rules.
“Of all the jailhouse lawyers, he was the greatest and the best known,” said Ronald L. Kuby, the defense lawyer, whose former law partner, William M. Kunstler, worked closely with Mr. Rosenberg during the Attica uprising. “He came of age in prison before there was widespread access to counsel for post-conviction proceedings.”
Mr. Rosenberg had already served nearly four years in prison for a robbery conviction in Queens when he was arrested and charged with killing two off-duty police detectives, Luke J. Fallon and John P. Finnegan, in a botched robbery of the Boro Park Tobacco Company in Brooklyn on May 18, 1962. It was the first double homicide of New York City police officers in 35 years, and about 1,000 officers were assigned to the manhunt. Mr. Rosenberg turned himself in, on his 25th birthday, at the offices of The Daily News, then on East 42nd Street.
Mr. Rosenberg and an accomplice, Anthony Portelli, were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. In
1965, the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, upheld the convictions but condemned the Police Department for severely beating a witness who testified at the trial. Later that year, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller commuted the death sentences, saying that they could not have been imposed under a new law that virtually abolished capital punishment in the state.
1965, the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, upheld the convictions but condemned the Police Department for severely beating a witness who testified at the trial. Later that year, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller commuted the death sentences, saying that they could not have been imposed under a new law that virtually abolished capital punishment in the state.
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Mr. Rosenberg began his prison sentence on Feb. 19, 1963. Another man, James Moore, who began serving a sentence for murder on July 12 of that year, is now the state’s longest-serving inmate, officials said.
Mr. Rosenberg, who always maintained he was not guilty of the killings, studied law through correspondence courses; he received a bachelor’s degree in 1967 from the Blackstone
School of Law in Chicago.
School of Law in Chicago.
Nicknamed Jerry the Jew — “he developed that moniker at a time when it was not politically incorrect,” Mr. Kuby said — Mr. Rosenberg soon became a well-known advocate for fellow inmates. (There is no record that he was ever admitted to the bar.)
During the Attica uprising in September 1971, which resulted in 43 deaths, Mr. Rosenberg was the chief legal adviser for the uprising’s leaders. After the State Police retook the prison, Mr. Rosenberg was transferred to Sing Sing, in Ossining.
Over the years, in various prisons, Mr. Rosenberg worked as a porter and as a substance abuse counselor. From 1996 to 1999, he was a paralegal assistant in the law library at Wende, where he had been held since 1991.
Jerome Rosenberg was born on May 23, 1937. Prison officials said that Mr. Rosenberg had at least two brothers, a wife and a son, but that they were not permitted to identify them and did not know whether any of them was still living. At the time of his arrest in 1962, Mr. Rosenberg was reported to have had a young daughter by a former wife.
Mr. Rosenberg was the subject of a biography by Stephen Bello, “Doing Life: The Extraordinary Saga of America’s Greatest
Jailhouse Lawyer,” published by St. Martin’s Press in 1982 and later made into a television movie, starring Tony Danza, in 1986.
Jailhouse Lawyer,” published by St. Martin’s Press in 1982 and later made into a television movie, starring Tony Danza, in 1986.
In the biography, Mr. Rosenberg is quoted saying that anyone who was to become a lawyer ought to “do some time in jail.”
Sheldon Silver spends last moments of freedom at synagogue
Sheldon Silver enjoyed his last moments of freedomon the Lower East Side on Saturday morning, a day after the disgraced ex-Assembly speaker was sentenced to seven years in prison for corruption.
Walking along Grand Street near his apartment, side-by-side with a younger man after services at Bialystoker Synagogue, an unsteady and graying Silver swatted away questions from The Post.
“Good morning,” the fedora-fitted felon said, sarcastically. “You just made your day.”
Silver, 74, is loose pending appeal after his second conviction for taking $4 million in kickbacks, plus $1 million in profits tied to two corruption schemes.
He’s free on the same $200,000 bail he posted when he was arrested in January 2015 for bribery.
After his first conviction that year, Silver was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2016.
That conviction was eventually overturned on appealafter the US Supreme Court narrowed the definition of bribery.
He was convicted again in May. On Friday, Judge Valerie Caproni gave Silver a lesser sentence, citing the Democrat’s advanced age.
“I feel like, visually, he’s aged more than the three years that have gone by chronologically,” she said.
Caproni, who presided over both trials, also noted the hefty financial burden she’s placing on Silver, who now owes a $1.75 million fine — $1.2 million of which is due Sept. 21.
The crooked kingmaker may also have to forfeit nearly $5.2 million in pocketed bribes and profit.
He was ordered to surrender to prison Oct. 5.
But if he successfully argues to remain free while appealing his conviction, as he has for the past two years, that date will be voided.
The judge recommended he at some point be sent to the Otisville federal prison in upstate Orange County, known for services for Orthodox Jewish inmates.
Silver is the fourth public official with Albany ties convicted in the Manhattan federal courthouse since March.
Silver’s lawyers had proposed, without success, that he serve a no-jail, community-service sentence of “helping” New Yorkers by using his “unique skills.”
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