The Advocate
Richard Blassberg

Federal Prosecutor Continues Misuse Of Taxpayers’ Money Maliciously Prosecuting Paul Cote, Victim Of Pirro Lie

Two weeks ago, April 26, 2007, Assistant United States Attorney Cynthia K. Dunne, headquartered at the Federal Courthouse, White Plains, filed a Notice Of Appeal with the United States District Court Judge Charles L Brieant, at the same location, in the case of United States of America v. Paul M. Cote.

Readers will recall that on April 23rd Federal District Court Judge Brieant had rendered a decision overturning the conviction of former County Correction Officer Paul Cote by a jury after trial, on September 20, 2006, and
their finding that he had violated 18 U.S.C. Section 242 depriving Zoran Teodorovic of his right to liberty, without due process of law, while acting under color of law.

Mr. Cote, who had been tried and convicted of Assault, Second Degree, in state court, in July 2001, and served three months in jail, had granted the United States Attorney’s Office a waiver of the five-year Statute of Limitations, whereupon that office proceeded to once again try him under the same facts as he had previously been exposed under, clearly in every Constitutional sense, Double Jeopardy.

What was most significant about Judge Brieant’s vacating of Cote’s conviction was the fact that it was not based upon some procedural technicality nor flaw, but rather upon the failure of the jury’s verdict to comport with the overwhelming weight of evidence presented at trial. No intelligent observer attending the case put on by Assistant United States Attorneys Cynthia Dunne and Andrew Schilling against Mr. Cote could, in good conscience,
ever conclude that it was his actions that ultimately, some fourteen months later, resulted in the death of inmate Teodorovic. Despite the confabulated fiction created by DA Jeanine Pirro some seven years earlier, the product of her ‘deal’ with the correction officer actually responsible, John Mark Reimer, the conspicuous truth remained that it was Reimer, six foot two inches tall, and 285 pounds, whose ‘bearhug’ and slamming of Teodorovic
to the concrete floor of G-1 Cellblock of the County Jail, with such force that the inmate’s head literally bounced, was the single most identifi-able cause of his ultimate premature death some fourteen months later.

We must now ask the United States Attorney’s Office, and more specifi-cally Attorney Cynthia Dunne, given what your office and you individually now know, and must publicly acknowledge, in light of the Anthony
DiSimone case, and all of the revelations that continue to flow from it, that, in fact, form the basis of your Office’s ongoing investigation of, and case against, former DA Jeanine Pirro, how can you ethically, morally, and in
good conscience, continue to pursue the malicious prosecution and harassment of Paul Cote based upon confabulated and irrational testimony schemed up between Officer Reimer, Jeanine Pirro and her assistant
Robert Neary?

You can not have it both ways, after all. You can not, on the one hand, prosecute her for her acts of blatant prosecutorial misconduct, some of which intimately involving your Office and the FBI, while at the same moment relying upon her witness’ suborned perjured testimony as though it was the Synoptic Gospel. Neither can you
continue to torment this Defendant and his loved ones without significantly losing face at a time when Michael J. Garcia, and the Administration in Washington are struggling to restore public confidence in the integrity of the Justice Department, and the judiciary, both state and federal, merely because the Government has unlimited financial resources, and can literally bankrupt and exhaust any defendant irrespective of his innocence and his determination to receive due process.

You must do the honorable thing now, not after you have been compelled to totally discredit and malign the very person whose lies you now use to torture and desecrate an innocent man. You must withdraw your appeal of Judge Brieant’s decision, and acknowledge the wisdom and truthfulness, and yes, the humanity, of it. In so doing you will fulfill your sworn duty as a federal prosecutor, not only to protect the innocent while prosecuting the guilty, but also to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.