Mexican cartel leader ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s life sentence is upheld after New York court denies his appeal
- The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rejected Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán request for a new trial
- El Chapo and his attorneys argued that members of the jury were following the trial in the media
- A juror, whose name was withheld, told Vice News that at least five jurors kept track of the case by following the trial’s coverage in the news
- The 64-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel was found guilty in February 2019
- El Chapo is serving his life sentence at ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado
- The facility is the most secure jail in the country; Ted Kaczynski, also known as The Unabomber,’ is being held at the same prison
A federal appeals court in New York has upheld the life sentence of Mexican drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan dismissed El Chapo’s claims that several members of the jury had closely followed his high-profile case throughout his three-month trial.
The court also rejected several other arguments the notorious kingpin raised in seeking a new trial, including that his jail conditions were deplorable and the U.S. government selectively targeted him for prosecution.
‘I’m sure Mr. Guzmán will seek Supreme Court review,’ the defendant’s lawyer Marc Fernich said in an email.
The office of U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s bid for a new trial was shut down by a federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday
The 64-year-old was found guilty on 10 counts in February 2019, including trafficking billions of dollars of drugs and conspiring to murder enemies as the co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.
El Chapo has been serving a life sentence at ADX Florence, the most secure federal prison, in Colorado, and was also ordered to forfeit $12.7 billion.
The convicted cartel boss’s legal team based its appeal on a Vice News article published one week after the verdict, where an unnamed juror said at least five fellow jurors followed media coverage of the trial, and lied about it to the presiding judge.
The coverage included accusations that Guzmán had drugged and raped teenage girls, which his lawyers denied and U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan refused to allow into the trial.
Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán (pictured at his July 17, 2019 sentencing) was found guilty on 10 counts by a New York federal jury in February 2019
El Chapo will continue to spend his life sentence at ADX Florence in Florece, Colorado. No prisoner has ever escaped from super maximum security facility
Judges in high-profile cases ordinarily instruct jurors not to follow their trials in newspapers, TV and the internet.
Circuit Judge Jon Newman said the unnamed juror’s unsworn, uncorroborated statements to Vice News were not ‘clear, strong, substantial and incontrovertible evidence’ requiring Cogan to haul jurors back for a hearing on their conduct.
‘None of the allegations in the Vice News article shows that any juror was not impartial, harbored bias against Guzmán, or was otherwise unfit to serve,’ Newman wrote.
El Chapo’s is confined to a 7-by-12-foot concrete cell with double doors in a section dubbed ‘Range 13’ for 23 hours a day and is only allowed to leave his quarters for one hour.
His lawyer, Mariel Colón, told Univision in September 2019 that he was experiencing problems with his vision and complained of a bad haircut because the barber could not communicate with him in Spanish.
El Chapo is only allotted one phone call per month and can only be visited by his 10-year-old Los Angeles-born daughters.
His wife, Emma Coronel, who was sentenced to a three-year prison term in November 2021 for pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering charges, is barred from contacting him.
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