Sheldon Silver, New York Power Broker Sent to Prison, Dies at 77

The Manhattan Democrat, who told a judge he prayed he wouldn’t die in prison, had been serving a more than six-year sentence in federal prison.

He was convicted of using his clout in state government to benefit real-estate developers, who rewarded him by referring lucrative business to his law firm.

His supporters have said he was in failing health recently and was susceptible to contracting Covid-19. He was furloughed for several days in May before federal authorities denied him home confinement.

Mr. Silver’s conviction ended a nearly four-decade career in the Assembly. He first won a seat representing Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1976. Though he cut a low-key figure in the halls of the state Capitol, carefully parsing out comments in a baritone mumble, he was a consummate practitioner of Albany’s inside game.

He was elected Assembly speaker in 1994, a powerful position that put him on equal footing with the governor and state Senate leader when it came to making key decisions about annual budgets or major legislation.

In all, Mr. Silver served as speaker during the tenure of five New York governors, from

Mario Cuomo

to

Andrew Cuomo.

He survived an early tenure coup attempt and became adept at horse-trading to secure education funding, tenants rights legislation and other policies favored by Assembly Democrats. An Orthodox Jew, Mr. Silver was known to observe Sabbath even during the marathon negotiation sessions that preceded annual budget deadlines and the end of legislative sessions.

Over time, he became a symbol of Albany’s much-maligned opaque style of governance and, ultimately, a target of federal prosecutors.

Prosecutors accused Mr. Silver of trading his influence for money. In one instance, they argued that he persuaded a physician to refer asbestos cancer patients to his law firm so it could seek multimillion-dollar settlements from personal-injury lawsuits, a secret arrangement that allowed him to collect about $3 million in referral fees. In return, prosecutors said he directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in state grants to a research center run by the doctor.

Mr. Silver’s lawyer argued that his client was entitled to accept payments for outside work.

His original 2015 conviction was tossed out by an appeals court after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the definition of a corrupt act. He was convicted again at a second trial in 2018 tailored slightly to conform to the high court ruling.

But an appeals court ultimately threw out the conviction related to the asbestos cancer patients, citing a faulty instruction to the jury. Prosecutors decided not to retry him on that charge. In the part of his conviction that stuck, the court found that he had supported legislation that benefited real-estate developers who were referring tax business to a law firm that employed him.

Mr. Silver gave up his leadership position following his arrest in January 2015 and lost his legislative seat upon his first conviction that November.

Mr. Silver was the youngest of four children of Russian immigrants. His father ran a wholesale hardware store. As an adult, he and his wife had four children and lived in a lower Manhattan apartment blocks from his first home.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School.

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