The defense strategy of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the bloodthirsty Mexican kingpin known as El Chapo, has taken a new drift this Monday in New York: the objective is now to obtain the annulment of the trial of the drug trafficker, sentenced in 2019 to life imprisonment, a sentence he is serving in a maximum security prison in Colorado, in the United States. His lawyer, Marc Fernich, has presented two reasons for this in an oral hearing held in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan: the “unprecedented” freedom restrictions imposed on the defendant since his arrest (two and a half years of solitary confinement ) and a presumed bad praxis of several members of the jury, who followed the news in the press despite the express prohibition of the judge who handed down the sentence.
This was revealed by a report from the magazine Vice, which counted that five of the citizens charged with prosecuting 10 charges for 12 weeks that included drug trafficking, possession of weapons, money laundering and criminal association allegedly ignored that warning. The complainant, another member of the jury, spoke in the article anonymously. According Vice, read in the press about the accusations of a witness that were considered inadmissible in the trial and that spoke of how the drug trafficker had drugged and sexually abused underage girls could influence the spirits of these people.
The anonymous whistleblower also revealed that they lied to Judge Brian Corgan, in charge of the case, when he asked them if they had read the news. Corgan dismissed in 2019 the need to investigate the misconduct reported by ViceTherefore, in his opinion, there was plenty of evidence that had led the jury to convict El Chapo.
The other avenue of judicial annulment explored by the drug trafficker’s lawyer refers to the confinement to which he was subjected in New York, who for decades was public enemy number one of American justice, a figure who inspired several movies and television series. “We cannot reverse a sentence simply because of that,” replied one of the three judges present today at the appeal hearing.
This is an old claim by Guzmán Loera’s defense, who repeatedly asked during the process that the conditions of his detention be alleviated, since these, they alleged, impeded proper preparation of the trial. According to the appeal, the trial “was influenced by totally unnecessary governmental and judicial excesses and excesses.”
At the hearing on Monday, the prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York also attended, who brought the accusation against El Chapo, and who has opposed all of Fernich’s arguments. At the moment, there is no scheduled date to hear the decision of the Court of Appeal.
Emma Coronel, El Chapo’s wife, pleaded guilty last June in Washington to three crimes of drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States, related to Guzman’s multimillion-dollar empire. The 31-year-old former beauty queen admitted participating in exchange for a 10-year or less prison sentence.
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