The lawyers of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, who was one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the United States, filed an
appeal
on Friday night
before a federal court in New York against the
life sentence
handed down against the drug trafficker in 2019.
The appeal document, registered by attorney Marc Fernich and most of which will remain sealed until the authorities decide to make it public, assures in its presentation that during the trial conducted by Judge Brian Cogan there were
ten legal errors
.
[Podcast | 'El Chapo' still hopes to 'escape' from jail. This is the maximum security prison where he has been locked up for a year]
The Mexican drug trafficker was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2019 by a Brooklyn court, which determined that he was the
leader of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel
, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in America and with great interests also in the United States.
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His defense appealed Judge Brian Cogan's decision for the first time within days of sentencing, but Judge Brian Cogan immediately rejected the claim.
Now, the lawyers have tried to play that card again, presenting similar arguments: the jury that convicted their client would have incurred serious offenses, which would warrant the annulment of the process and the opening of a new one.
Among several issues, they accuse several jurors of admitting that they read news about the trial while it was going on, something that Cogan prohibited them from doing.
They are based for this on an interview in the "Vice" medium that one of the members of the jury granted under anonymity after the conclusion of the trial.
Mariel Colón Miró, one of the lawyers defending the Mexican kingpin, told the AFP news agency that
the process "can last from two to five years
.
"
His legal team also maintains that there were
irregularities in his extradition
from Mexico, that the
harsh conditions of confinement
before the trial hampered the preparation of his defense or that prosecutors were allowed to present
excessive graphic evidence
on the alleged 26 murders in which he was involved. 'El Chapo' and by whom he was not being tried, which, they argue, predisposed the members of the court against him.
[Son of 'El Chapo' Guzmán distributes food outside a hospital in Culiacán]
In addition, his lawyers assure that during the investigation evidence, telephone conversations and text messages from the accused were illegally collected.
Finally, they request that
another judge investigate
whether the prosecutors and the judge engaged in improper secret communications.
The defense of the Mexican, former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, went to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York
at the stroke of midnight
and on
the last day he had to challenge the sentence
that Cogan imposed on him after a trial held under
strict security measures
.
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On August 13, the defense requested to
extend the deadline
for delivering the documents by two weeks to present the appeal documents against what they consider to be an unfair trial, after El Chapo was found guilty of sending tons of drugs to the United States. of maintaining a continuing criminal enterprise and firearms charges.
Guzmán Loera himself, known as "el Rápido" because of the way in which he distributed drugs, denounced before hearing the sentence alleged mistreatment in the federal prison in Manhattan, where he spent two years.
[One year after the trial of 'El Chapo', everything is the same: the cartel is still intact and the corruption too]
The Mexican faced a three-month judicial process in which 56 witnesses were heard, including former partners and employees, and after six days of deliberations the jury found him guilty on February 12, 2019.
Meanwhile, 'El Chapo' is still locked up in a maximum security prison in Colorado, a prison called the Alcatraz de las Rocosas.
There, prisoners such as Zacarías Moussaoui, convicted of the attacks of September 11, 2001, or Ted Kaczynski, alias
Unabomber
, spend 23 hours a day locked up there, in total isolation
.
Their cells are concrete walls and soundproof to prevent communication with other inmates, some have no windows, and inmates spend 23 hours alone, with minimal contact with prison staff.
The pipes of the units into which the prison is divided do not transmit sound.
The capo was extradited to the United States after being arrested in 2017 in Mexico.
With information from EFE and AP.