Paul grew up in a rough, low-income neighborhood in the Bronx. From the time he was a child, he worked tirelessly on his academics and artistic pursuits hoping one day to be able to support his family and move them out of the Bronx. His early life was filled with family, friendships, mentors, hard work, academics, music, sports, theatre and art. Paul was always well liked by teachers and students. He dated many girls throughout his life without any problems. He never had any run-ins or problems with police.

Paul grew up with a family striving for the American dream. His family loves America and many family members serve in law enforcement and in our military. From his early childhood, his family looked at Paul as the carrier of their dreams. He was blessed with so many people who loved and supported him. Throughout each phase of his life, Paul had a large outpouring of people in his life who saw goodness and promise in him. He was always known as a gentle, nurturing and loving soul.

Paul’s hard work paid off very early on in life. In sixth grade, he gained a three-year academic scholarship to the very prestigious Buckley School. He made the 2 1⁄2 hour trek each way from the Bronx to his Upper East Side school by subway and bus beginning at 5:30 am. At the Buckley School, Paul excelled in academics and athletics. He was the captain of both the football and wrestling team.

Paul and Catherine met at New York Sports Club in 2004. From the very beginning, Paul was very aware of her complicated situation with David. Catherine spoke of David as her “ex”, and felt bad for David because he did not have a family or home.

Paul and Catherine started out as friends. They both lived extremely busy lives with lots of friends and career motivations – Paul was forming a band and Catherine was training in dance and singing while trying to get out of bad relationship with David.

From the get-go, Paul and Catherine spoke on the phone every day. They were seeing each other five to seven days each week. Catherine attended many of Paul’s musical performances and they visited the ballet together. Six weeks into their relationship, Paul and Catherine’s relationship changed and they became romantic with each other.

In April of 2005, Catherine was drugged at one of the strip clubs where she worked. She immediately phoned Paul for help. Paul raced to the club to provide aid. He was terrified for Catherine’s well-being so he called her father asking him to help. Catherine was upset with Paul for involving her father. When questioned by her father, Catherine told him that Paul was crazy and that she was not working as a stripper or involved in anything dangerous – Catherine’s father believed her. Following this incident, Catherine broke up with Paul and they did not speak for 3-4 weeks thereafter. They did, however, eventually reconcile and get back together. Paul had met David once when Paul came to visit Catherine at home. David did not know about Paul (but Paul knew about David). When David found out that Catherine was dating Paul, David became very upset that she had been misleading him about their relationship.

No one witnessed the crime. The murder weapon was never found. No surveillance video placed Paul at the scene of the crime. No one interviewed by the police saw Paul at the location, much less with blood dripping from his person. A clutch of hair with roots still attached was found entwined in the victim’s bloody fingers – that hair was dissimilar to that of Paul Cortez.

At least three of the hairs were light in color, like David Haughn’s (whose hair was never scientifically tested).

Haughn initially told police that he left the apartment 20 minutes prior to calling 911, placing him squarely inside the apartment at the time four disinterested civilian witnesses heard screams and cries from Catherine. Haughn, however, changed his timeline at trial to one that did not incriminate himself.

Although Paul would ultimately be charged and convicted for the murder, from the inception, Haughn, who immediately fingered Paul, was identified as the prime suspect. It was only when a latent print mistakenly believed to have been impressed in a matrix of blood transfer at the scene did not match Haughn that the focus shifted to Paul. From the beginning, Paul was cooperative with the police and voluntarily submitted his DNA, turned over his clothing, cell phone and other belongings, and allowed the free search of his apartment.

Paul was ultimately arrested and tried, based on circumstantial evidence consisting of the high-volume calling patterns between himself and Catherine, cell site records placing him on the Upper East Side near the time of the murder, and a witness’s assertion that Paul owned and was wearing shoes that were possibly consistent with the size and style of of the shoe’s outer sole left in blood near the victim’s body. The only physical evidence argued to be directly incriminating was the latent partial fingerprint matched to Paul that had been lifted from Catherine’s bedroom wall.

The police also seized thousands of pages of Paul’s diaries dating back to when he was ten years old. Those thousands of pages contained Paul’s deepest thoughts – and all the prosecutor came up with to use negatively against Paul were the lyrics to a song Paul co-wrote with his band member and childhood comic drawing of a Teenage Mutant Turtle holding a sword. Despite having every action in his life scrutinized, the police and prosecutor had to manipulate and fabricate information to serve their false narrative.

The police and prosecutor presented this manipulated narrative about Paul when questioning people from Paul’s past in attempts to pile on to the narrative. Years later, many witnesses spoken to by Paul’s current attorney recounted their harassment at the hands of law enforcement who tried to pressure them into corroborating the false narrative the police were perpetuating.

At this point, after losing direct appeal, must hire new attorneys, re-investigate crime 10+ years later, hire experts that cost $10k-$20k, all from prison cell depending on others.

In the immediate aftermath after the murder, law enforcement obtained video from several surveillance cameras that captured individuals in the immediate vicinity of Catherine’s apartment. For a brief period of time, law enforcement erroneously believed that Paul’s image was captured fleeing the location of the homicide. This faulty information was reported by several news outlets and communicated to several witnesses by the prosecutor. By the time of the trial, however, the prosecution had conceded that Paul’s image was not on any of the surveillance footage. That surveillance video, to the detriment of Paul, would play little role at trial.

One of the surveillance videos obtained by law enforcement was from a camera adjacent to the entrance of Catherine’s apartment. Ten years later, Paul’s current attorney finally received a copy of that video (included in countless boxes of case-related materials previously in the possession of Dawn Florio and Laura Miranda).

Upon review of this surveillance video, alternate suspect David Haughn is clearly depicted leaving the scene at 6:37 pm after the time of Catherine’s murder. This evidence breakthrough unquestionably contradicts Haughn’s trial testimony and places him at the scene of the crime during the crime. Further, the prosecutor’s theory on the timeline is unquestionably wrong. Did Dawn Florio, Laura Miranda and the prosecution not watch this surveillance video or did they choose to keep it from the trial? They each had possession of this verified, timestamped surveillance footage. Shockingly, the prosecutor actually presented an earlier time sequence from this same surveillance video to show David and Catherine walking the dog earlier in the evening.

The 440 motion also included numerous reports from forensic experts. Most importantly, four different leading fingerprint experts all provided affidavits and scientific analysis to demonstrate that the “bloody fingerprint” was a pre-existing print subsequently covered at the time of the crime. The expert reports also show that there also existed a separate partial fingerprint on the crime scene wall that was never identified or introduced at the trial (by either side).

A cell phone expert also provided analysis to show that only 3 phone calls between Paul and Catherine actually connected on the day of the murder – thus, undermining the prosecutor’s narrative about the continuous, jealous rage phone calls from Paul to Catherine on the day of the murder.

Also, after the trial, CBS 48 Hours Mystery reported that it had interviewed the witness who purported to identify Paul’s footwear at trial. In a portion of the CBS interview that did not make it to air, this witness told CBS that he he had no recollection of Paul’s footwear that evening, especially since they were in a dark bar. Somehow, several months later, this witness’s recollection inexplicably became clearer and he definitively testified on the specifics of Paul’s footwear. Interestingly, this witness moved out of the country after the trial.

The 440 motion detailed numerous other deficiencies in the case against Paul and the mind boggling, conflicted defense put forward by Dawn Florio and Laura Miranda.

On August 3, 2017, Paul’s 440 motion was denied by Judge Patricia Nunez in the 1st Department of the Supreme Court of New York. The judge’s rationale for the denial was illogical as she explained that the “smoking gun” video of David Haughn leaving the crime scene after the murder had little value because it was not timestamped and could have been from a time before the murder. This statement is especially disturbing since the video was indisputably timestamped – the prosecutor even conceded it was David in the video and that it was timestamped.

Next the judge minimized the forensic findings of six experts concluding the print was under the blood. The judge wrote that Paul had been in the apartment many times and it could be very likely have been an old print was later covered in blood (and consistent with the expert findings). While the judge’s theory is correct, the prosecutor’s entire case was premised on the print being left at the scene of the crime. Without a print left at the time of the crime, there is no case against Paul Cortez.