SKOWHEGAN — Pre-trial motions are set to begin Monday in the murder trial of a Palmyra man charged in the bludgeoning death of another man in the town of Detroit in July 2013.
Jason Cote, 24, is charged with the intentional, knowing or depraved indifference murder in the death of Ricky Cole. Cote is alleged to have beaten Cole, 47, with a pipe inside Cole’s mobile home at 24 Main St., Detroit. Police say Cote was high on drugs and was seeking more drugs when he went to Cole’s home on July 17. Cole was found dead the next morning from blunt force trauma to the head and neck.
Trial timeline
• July 17, 2013: Police say Jason C. Cote, of Palmyra, was already high on drugs when he went to a mobile home at 24 Main St. in Detroit to get more drugs.
• July 18, 2013: Somerset County sheriff’s deputies and Pittsfield police were called to a home on Main Street in the town of Detroit just after 3 a.m. in response to a report of a man who was dead in his home. The state police Major Crimes Unit arrived and processed the scene, and the body was removed. The man was identified as 47-year-old Ricky Cole. The State Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that Cole died from blunt force trauma.
• July 24, 2013: Jason C. Cote, 22, is arrested at his grandmother’s house in St. Albans on a charge of murder. He has been held without bail at the Somerset County Jail in East Madison ever since.
• July 26, 2013: Cote enters no plea during his first appearance in Somerset County Superior Court.
• Sept. 13, 2013: Cote enters a plea of not guilty during his arraignment on a grand jury indictment. DNA on clothing found under Cote’s home on Hurd’s Corner Road in Palmyra the day after the murder matches the DNA from Cole’s body, court documents show.
• April 2014: A closed conference for a possible plea agreement is held with no agreement reached.
• Sept. 12, 2014: Cote’s murder trial is delayed for a second time after John Alsop, his court-appointed attorney, leaves for a post as a prosecutor with the Maine Attorney General’s Office. The trial had originally been scheduled for May, but was postponed over reported delays in paperwork.
• June 2015: Jury trial is postponed for a third time when Cote switches court-appointed lawyers. He had been represented by Skowhegan attorney Philip Mohlar, Alsop’s former law partner. Attorney Stephen Smith, of the Augusta law firm Lipman & Katz, is appointed by the court to represent Cote.
• November 2015: Motions are filed in court in anticipation of the start of trial.
• Dec. 7, 2015: Pretrial motions are set to be heard before Superior Court Justice Andrew Horton in Skowhegan with the trial beginning later in the week.
Cote has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Motions that will set the stage for the trial are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday with jury selection set for Wednesday. The trial would begin immediately afterward and would stretch well into next week.
Superior Court Justice Andrew Horton, who will preside over the trial, in November partly granted a defense motion asking for access to documents related to counseling services that Kennebec Behavioral Health provided to Ricky Cole, meaning that the records would be available for “in camera” review, or in the judge’s chambers where the public will not be able to see them. Any motion to quash the request will come Monday.
Confidential mental health records for Cole could include a statement he made to counselors about almost killing police officers and a statement he made about killing two people in a motor vehicle accident in New Hampshire two years before his death.
Cote’s attorneys said his client was aware of Cole’s threat to kill police officers as well as the statement he had made about previously killing other people, and that would have given him reason to fear Cole. That knowledge could lead to self defense as a reason for the murder because he felt Cole could use force against him, according to court filings.
Cole was convicted of motor vehicle manslaughter in New Hampshire, but Maine Assistant Attorney General Leanne Zainea, who is prosecuting the case, said in a court filing that even if Cote did have knowledge of Cole’s criminal history and alleged statements to mental health workers, they would not necessarily fit the criteria for evidence. Zainea has said evidence of a violent past is inadmissible to prove that Cole would have been violent on any given occasion in the future.
In a letter to Justice Horton, who will hear the case, Ken Lehman and Molly Baker Gilligan, attorneys for Kennebec Behavioral Health, say Cole’s records contain confidential health information protected from public view by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPPA, even if Cole is deceased, and they object to its disclosure.
The lawyers have suggested an order to restrict access to Cole’s records and to use them only within the context of the trial and to return or destroy them once the trial is over.
Other motions to be acted upon are to include whether the employment history of Maine Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Mark Flomenbaum can be raised during cross examination at trial. Flomenbaum was terminated as chief medical examiner in Massachusetts after his staff temporarily misplaced a body, according to news reports.
Zainea objects to the inclusion of such information as irrelevant to the Cote case and because it could confuse the issues or confuse the jury.
Cote’s attorney, Stephen Smith, also has filed motions that include preventing the prosecution from urging the jury in closing statements to use “common sense” in their deliberations. Smith asserts that such a phrase dilutes the state’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Smith also seeks rulings on whether his defense team can have a private investigator present at their table during trial and on having the state identify photographs it intends to use at trial so as not to shock or influence the jury with gruesome images.
Detectives with the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit found Cole dead July 18, 2013, in his mobile home. Cole had a fractured skull, extensive blood loss and deep internal injuries, according to the autopsy report. The medical examiner concluded that Cole died from blunt force trauma to the head and neck.
Police said in court documents that Cote was high on drugs when he arrived at Cole’s home. A day earlier, Cote snorted methadone and Xanax at a friend’s home on Dogtown Road in Palmyra, according to the court affidavit. He later was dropped off at Cole’s mobile home, allegedly to get more drugs.
According to court documents, police found blood drops and spatter throughout the residence — from the outdoor deck and front door to the kitchen ceiling, walls, TV, couch and to the ceiling above the spot where Cole lay.
Witnesses later told Maine State Police investigators that a metal pipe found in a nearby pond was one Cole had kept next to his couch.
The blood spatter evidence indicates Cole was struck while he was seated on the couch and then struck again several times while lying on his back, which is how he was when police found him, according to investigators.
Police also found tool marks, possibly from the pipe, on a laptop computer and in the ceiling above Cole’s body. Damage to the ceiling tiles “were consistent with at least four strikes from a weapon in motion to the general area of the victim’s head,” according to court documents.
DNA analysis of all the blood samples taken from inside the home determined they were Cole’s. The case was originally scheduled to go to trial in May 2014, but has been delayed three times, once because defense attorneys alleged they were not given enough time to review evidence provided by the state and twice because of changes in court-appointed attorneys assigned to represent Cote.
Cote faces 25 years to life in prison if he is found guilty. He remains in custody at the Somerset County Jail in East Madison, held without bail and awaiting trial.
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
Twitter:@Doug_Harlow
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