Peter T. Farrell

In 1943, Farrell was elected to serve on the Queens County Court and spent most of his judicial career on criminal cases. He served as the court's senior judge from 1945 until 1961, when the court was abolished and its responsibilities consolidated into the New York Supreme Court. He was the senior judge in Queens on the Supreme Court, Criminal Term, until he stepped down in 1976.^[1]

Farrell presided over the 1952 trial of bank robber Willie Sutton in which Sutton had been charged with the 1950 heist of $63,942 from a branch of the Manufacturers Trust Company in Sunnyside, Queens, part of more than $2 million he was estimated to have stolen from various banks over the course of his career in crime.^[1] Sutton was found guilty and given a sentence of 30 to 120 years in Attica State Prison.^[1]

Farrell suspended Sutton's sentence in December 1969, ruling that Sutton's good behavior in prison and his deteriorating health due to emphysema justified the suspension of the sentence. After the ruling was delivered, Sutton said "Thank you, your Honor. God bless you" and started crying as he was led out of the court building. Sutton still had to receive a suspension of a separate 30-year-to-life sentence he had received in Brooklyn in 1952 and then could be released on parole from a 1930 conviction.^[3] Sutton would ultimately die in 1980.^[1]

Farrell died at age 91 on November 9, 1992, of pneumonia at his home in Manhasset, New York. He was survived by his wife, the former Agnes Byrne, as well as by two daughters and 10 grandchildren.^[1]

New York State Assembly
Preceded by Charles W. Posthauer	New York State Assembly Queens County, 3rd District 1930–1936	Succeeded by John V. Downey
New York State Senate
Preceded by Frank B. Hendel	New York State Senate 3rd District 1937–1943	Succeeded by John V. Downey