July 29, 2010, 12:37 pm 

Updated 3:56 p.m. | A State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan dismissed 13 charges on Thursday in a criminal case against the political consultant Hank Morris, but ruled that some of the most serious ones could remain.

Mr. Morris, a prominent Democratic strategist who had been a top adviser to Alan G. Hevesi, the former state comptroller, was charged in 2009 with 90 felonies and misdemeanors, including bribery, grand larceny, money laundering and fraud.

Prosecutors in the state attorney general’s office said that Mr. Morris and others had participated in a scheme to turn New York’s $122 billion pension fund into a criminal enterprise. The scheme netted them tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks from firms investing the fund’s money, the indictment said.

In an 85-page ruling (also see below), Judge Lewis Bart Stone Jr. dismissed five counts of falsifying business records, five counts of filing false documents, two counts of grand larceny and a count of scheme to defraud.

The ruling removed one of the top counts against Mr. Morris, grand larceny in the first degree, a class B felony that carries a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. But Mr. Morris still faces a charge of enterprise corruption, which carries the same potential sentence.

Other remaining charges include falsifying business records, money laundering and bribery.

Mr. Morris’s lawyer, William Schwartz, declined to comment after the proceeding.

Mr. Hevesi resigned in late 2006 after pleading guilty to a felony related to his use of state workers as drivers for his ailing wife, following an investigation that eventually broadened to include corruption in the state pension fund.

Six people have pleaded guilty as a result of the investigation into the state pension fund, including Raymond B. Harding, the former chief of the Liberal Party in the state, and David J. Loglisci, the former chief investment officer for the state’s pension fund.

Mr. Morris had sought the dismissal of all the charges, claiming, among other things, that the attorney general had charged him improperly with violations of the state’s securities law, known as the Martin Act, and that the grand jury lacked evidence to justify the indictments.

The grand larceny indictments were based on Mr. Morris’s acceptance of placement or management fees from two companies that the state fund invested in. However, Judge Stone wrote that those fees were paid voluntarily.

“There was no evidence before the grand jury to show how extortion played a role in these transactions,” he wrote.

But Judge Stone also wrote that the grand jury had heard sufficient evidence to sustain most of the charges against Mr. Morris. That evidence, he wrote, supported the assertion that investment decisions in hedge funds and private equity funds “were based on whether such fund had agreed to pay placement fees or share management fees with Morris or his designees rather than solely on the prudent investor rule.”