Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, has asked the US justice system to overturn his life sentence and start a new trial.
According to a document sent to New York judge Brian Cogan, Guzmán was “deprived of the right to legal representation”, accusing the team that defended him in 2019 of having been “inefficient”.
The Mexican stressed that the lawyers did not request a preliminary analysis of documents provided by Mexico in support of a US extradition request.
The appeal, signed on Sept. 6, recalled that the trial took place in Brooklyn and not in the states of Texas or California, as stipulated in the extradition request.
Guzmán claimed that the failure to do so caused him harm, preventing him from adequately challenging the extradition terms, denying him a “fair trial”.
The document also accused the team that defended him of not opposing the motions filed by the government and of not investigating the possibility of a judicial agreement with the US State Department.
In January, a New York court had already rejected an appeal by Joaquin Guzmán against the conviction.
As the main arguments for the appeal, “El Chapo” lawyers questioned his conviction because one of the jurors admitted that he learned the elements of the case through the media during the trial.
The defense also argued that the Mexican’s total isolation since his extradition to the United States in January 2017 had prevented him from preparing his defense.
Considered the most powerful drug trafficker in the world at the time, Guzmán was convicted in 2019 of transporting at least 1,200 tons of cocaine into the United States over a quarter of a century, in addition to illegal firearms use and money laundering.
The notorious drug dealer was sentenced to life in prison, with an additional symbolic sentence of 30 years, for using automatic weapons.
During the trial, the prosecution revealed that the Mexican, now 64, had ordered the murder or had sentenced at least 26 people to death, sometimes after being tortured.
Among them were informants, traffickers from rival organizations, police, employees and even family members.
“El Chapo,” who is still known for his spectacular escape from a Mexican prison through a tunnel in 2015, is being held in a maximum-security prison in the state of Colorado, in the western United States.
The drug dealer’s wife, Ema Coronel Aispuro, was sentenced to three years in prison by a US court in Washington in late November 2021 after admitting to working with her husband in June.
Source: DN
