Federal Judge Denise L. Cote overlooks attorney's woes & condones Attorney's outrageous ethnic slurs
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She was anointed life tenure, granted extraordinary power, and allowed to sit on one of the most prestigious courts in the United States of America. She has already flirted with the possibility of being appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and has formerly acted as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Yet, Denise L. Cote's impressive resume does not illuminate a correlation to her current judicial temperament. There is no question that Denise L. Cote has the smarts to pen ingenious legal opinions worthy of a Circuit Court, but whether she has the integrity to fairly rule on the law continues to be a debatable question. Judge Cote's recent rulings, especially in criminal proceedings, underscore many legitimate reasons why critics want to keep her away from a possible Circuit appointment and instead, canonize her as a prime candidate for the scarce impeachment process.
In recent days, Judge Denise L. Cote has deservingly come under fire for her obliteration of a defendant's right to effective representation under the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution. On December 21, 2011, Federal Judge Denise L. Cote ruled in United States v. Angelo DiPietro that a criminal defense attorney, Martin Geduldig, was not constitutionally ineffective, despite his misrepresentation of sentencing consequences during plea negotiations and failing to mount any defense for his client at an ensuing trial. Geduldig, whom was appointed by Judge Cote, just two weeks before the three month long Racketeering trial, did not call a single witness on his client's behalf nor did he investigate the case outside the courtroom. Instead, court documents show that he lazed his way through the trial process, sat in his counselor chair, and ate away at scarce government funds.
Afoot from these critical mishaps, Gedudlig's only actions on the client's behalf amounted to eliciting prejudicial information during cross examinations of government witnesses or degrading members of the proceeding with racial and ethnic slurs. While under Judge Cote's nose, Geduldig repeatedly told jurors that the government's witnesses could not be trusted because they were "wetback immigrants." Geduldig repeatedly berated Mexicans in front of Judge Cote, and essentially labeled Mexican settlers as an unworthy class of humanity amounting to nothing more than "wetback" crooks.
Instead of reprimanding Geduldig for his outlandish behavior, Judge Cote has gone on the record to defend his actions. Cote wrote that Geduldig's summation to jurors was "hard hitting" and ethnic slurs towards Mexican decedents were nothing more than the "bread and butter" of a "skillful defense." When addressing counselor's pretrial misrepresentations, Cote also held that although there was evidence that the client was told that he only faced seven years instead of the twenty five year consecutive mandatory sentence he received, she was willing to defer to this counselor's recent declaration that he had not remembered giving such advisement. In reaching her decision, Cote choose to ignore both the sentencing delay that she actually granted the client in 2005 due to counsel then representation that he misunderstood the sentencing guidelines and scores of letters written during the trial that confirmed this fact. Now, several years later, without an evidentiary hearing, Judge Denise L. Cote decided that such letters and her own delay must have been a reflection of nothing more than counsel's advocacy on his client's behalf and not a misunderstanding of the law. Being one of the most bizarre assertions ever penned by a federal judge, Cote essentially claimed that counsel misrepresented the truth at the time and hoped to fool everyone into rendering a lower sentence by making believe that he had no clue that the client faced a twenty five year mandatory minimum.
This recent decision not only marks that Judge Denise L. Cote is willing to be intellectually dishonest when seeking to protect a criminal conviction, but also renders her decision making very irrational. Judge Cote's decisions on criminal matters, such as this case, are clearly indicative of her inability to take off her former prosecutor hat and act as a fit member of a federal bench, especially a Circuit court. In fact, had Cote been sitting on a membered bench, such as the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, it would be no surprise that a decision, such as the one publicly unleashed in United States v. Dipietro, would have had a better chance of being scorched by lighting before ever being published by a federal reporter. Judge Cote surely would not have found much support for her irrational conclusions from other members of the federal judiciary, especially those justices afoot to former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. In fact, Marshall, while sitting in a Supreme Court Conference with Justice Rehnquist, had heard Rehnquist refer to illegal immigrants as "wetbacks." At the time, Marshall claimed that he had heard his share of slurs over the years, but to hear such an epithet in a conference of the U.S. Supreme Court was more than he could bear. Marshall exploded at Rehnquist, who lamely attempted to defend himself by saying in his part of the country the term wetbacks still had "currency." Marshall fumed that by the same reasoning, he'd long been called a "nigger."
Judge Denise L. Cote appears to be lucky that Justice Marshall will not be reviewing her decisions from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. However, her luck may not stretch as far with active members of the Circuit if she continues her senseless shenanigans. Judge Denise L. Cote has apparently forgotten that the "bread and butter" she receives from United States taxpayers is not derived from the lunches served at the United States Attorney's office. Maybe, if Judge Denise L. Cote was an immigrant "wetback," or related to a "wetback" that lost family members trying to come to America, she would have remembered this December 21, 2011 that she was penning her decision from a federal bench. Hopefully, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and the civil liberty unions around this Nation, will leave Judge Cote an opinionated reminder.
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