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Former Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has appealed against his life sentence. According to the document that “El Chapo’s” lawyer presented to a New York court on Friday night and which is available to the dpa news agency, the US authorities have “blindly exaggerated” the accusation. “El Chapo,” the leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel for 25 years, is currently in a maximum security prison in the mountainous desert of the US state of Colorado.
“El Chapos” defense attorney Marc Fernich now argues, among other things, that “extraordinary and unprecedented” security measures prevented a fair trial. Given that “El Chapo” had already spent two and a half years in solitary confinement before the guilty verdict in early 2019, he was barely able to work with the defense.
In addition, the lawyer for the 63-year-old Mexican accuses the United States Judiciary of ignoring reports that various members of the jury followed her case in the media during negotiations, which the judge had prohibited to rule out influence.
“We are very optimistic that something positive will come from this,” said Guzmán’s lawyer, Mariel Colón Miro, of the AFP news agency. Wait for the sentence to be set aside due to procedural errors.
Mexican authorities extradited the drug expo to the United States in 2017, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years for drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes in July 2019. The jury found “El Chapo” guilty of all ten charges in one of the largest drug trials in US history, including involvement in a criminal organization, the international manufacture and distribution of cocaine and heroin, as well as money laundering and the use of firearms.
