A United States appeals court on Tuesday upheld the federal conviction of reputed Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, lauding the judge who oversaw the trial for his handling of a case that drew international attention.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected claims that Judge Brian Cogan allowed a jury to hear faulty evidence at Guzman’s 2019 trial.
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Cogan “conducted the three-month trial with diligence and fairness, after issuing a series of meticulously crafted pretrial rulings,” the appeals court panel concluded in its ruling.
Authorities escort Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, center, from a plane in Ronkonkoma, N.Y.
(U.S. law enforcement via AP)
Known as Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Guzman, 64, was convicted in New York on Feb. 12, 2019, of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation. He was sentenced to life in prison in July of that year.
His attorney, Marc Fernich, told Fox News after Tuesday’s ruling that he expects his client will want to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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“While respecting the Court’s ruling, we’re disappointed that substantial allegations of grave jury misconduct continue to be swept under the rug and left wholly unexamined in a case of historic proportion — all, it appears, because of the defendant’s matchless notoriety,” Fernich said.
At the trial, Guzman’s lawyers argued that he was the fall guy for other kingpins who were better at paying off top Mexican politicians and law enforcement officials to protect them while the U.S. government looked the other way. They said witnesses’ descriptions of El Chapo leading a lavish lifestyle featuring private planes, beachfront villas and a private zoo were overblown, and that there’s no chance the U.S. government could collect the multi-billion-dollar forfeiture.
Guzman, whose two dramatic prison escapes in Mexico fed into a legend that he and his family were all but untouchable, was extradited to the United States in 2017.
As Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, he ran a cartel responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors said in court papers.
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Under Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel – one of the world’s largest drug trafficking organizations – was responsible for multiple murders and smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States, officials said. Prosecutors also previously said Guzman’s “army of sicarios,” or “hit men,” was under orders to kidnap, torture and kill anyone who got in his way.
Guzman’s lawyers argued in their appeal that jurors reportedly sought out news accounts about sex abuse allegations against him that were barred from the trial, and said the judge mishandled the issue when he did not order a hearing regarding the allegations.
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“The decision seems like it was decided and written before the argument even occurred,” another of Guzman’s lawyers, Jeffrey Lichtman, said in a statement Tuesday. “How can there be justice here when the jury was exposed to scurrilous claims against Mr. Guzman which were not part of the government’s case?”
Cogan was correct in finding “that the jury was not prejudiced by any extraneous information to which they might have been exposed,” the appeals court ruled. It added: “Any possible prejudice was harmless in view of the overwhelming evidence of Guzman’s guilt.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
