From 1947 to 1957, he was Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, First Department in New York, and in that time took a leading role in the reform of judiciary of that state.
Mrs. Greer admitted before her death to have given a son up for adoption after birth, but the entire substantial fortune of this otherwise childless woman was bequeathed to Harvard University.
In 1973, Attorney General Elliot Richardson offered Peck the role of special counsel to investigate the Watergate scandal but he declined.
[5] In 1950, the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, John McCloy, convened an Advisory Board on Clemency (aka the Peck Panel, after its chairman David Peck) as an independent expert panel to make recommendations on sentences of persons convicted by U.S. Military tribunals as war criminals.
[6] The legal status of the Peck Panel was not fully understood; in practice, it functioned as a clemency committee.
The Peck Panel considered the clemency petitions of the convicts and the exculpatory briefs of their defence lawyers.
[7] The Peck Panel reviewed the clemency petitions of 99 convicts; all were in prison as war criminals in Landsberg.