Home New York Press Releases 2009 Former Westchester County Jail Guard Remanded Pending Sentence for Violation of Inmate’s Civil Rights
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Former Westchester County Jail Guard Remanded Pending Sentence for Violation of Inmate’s Civil Rights

U.S. Attorney’s Office January 06, 2009
  • Southern District of New York (212) 637-2600

LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that PAUL M. COTÉ, a former Corrections Officer with the Westchester County Department of Correction, was remanded today pending sentence, presently scheduled for May 2009. At a bail revocation hearing held today in federal court in White Plains, United States District Judge KENNETH M. KARAS concluded that COTE should be remanded because he had been found guilty of a crime of violence.

COTÉ had originally been found guilty following a jury trial in September 2006 of using excessive force against a Westchester County inmate, Zoran Teodorovic. Teodorovic, who was 46 at the time of the incident in 2000, suffered brain trauma as a result, survived for 14 months in a persistent vegetative state, and then died. Teodorovic was a Yugoslavian immigrant who had been arrested five days earlier for trespassing and was in pretrial detention in Westchester County because he was unable to pay a $250 bail. But on April 3, 2007, United States District Judge CHARLES L. BRIEANT set aside the jury’s verdict against COTÉ. However, on September 24, 2008, following an appeal by the Government, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment of acquittal and remanded the case to the district court for sentencing. Sentencing was set by Judge KARAS for May 8, 2009, at 2:00 p.m. in White Plains.

Assistant United States Attorneys CYNTHIA K. DUNNE and DAVID J. KENNEDY are in charge of the prosecution.

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