New York Federal Judge Martin Thomas Manton was the first federal judge convicted of accepting bribes while in office in 1939

Martin Thomas Manton

Martin Thomas Manton was a United States federal judge in New York City, who resigned and served time in prison for accepting bribes while in office. In 1916 he was the youngest federal judge in the United States. Manton was the first federal judge to be convicted of bribery.

Manton suffered severe financial reverses during the Great Depression and began to accept gifts and loans from persons having business before his court, some of which constituted outright bribes for selling his vote in pending patent litigations. Rumors of corruption spread and in 1939, Manton resigned under pressure of investigations by Manhattan District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey, who wrote a letter to the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committeerecommending impeachment proceedings, and by a federal grand jury.

Following his resignation, Manton was indicted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York where he once sat as a judge. The government was represented at trial by John T. Cahill, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Assistant United States Attorneys, Mathias F. Correa, Jerome Doyle, Frank H. Gordon and Silvio J. Mollo. Honorable William Calvin Chestnut of the District of Maryland presided over the jury trial at which Manton called former Democratic Presidential candidates Alfred Smith and John W. Davis as character witnesses. Manton became the first federal judge convicted of accepting bribes.

Manton's conviction was affirmed by a specially constituted Second Circuit panel consisting of retired Supreme Court JusticeGeorge Sutherland, Supreme Court JusticeHarlan Fiske Stone, and newly appointed Second Circuit Judge Charles Edward Clark.Manton was sentenced to two years inLewisburg Federal Penitentiary and served 17 months.

Following release from prison, he moved toFayetteville, New York, where he died on November 17, 1946. To this day, a park in Queens, NY bears Manton's name.

SOURCES : MEDIAWIKI