El Chapo Trial: Sinaloa Cartel Boss' Life Sentence Upheld by U.S. Appeals Court

A U.S. appeals court has upheld the life sentence of Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera after his request for a new trial was dismissed.

According to Daily Mail, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, New York on Tuesday dismissed El Chapo's claims that several jury members had closely followed his high-profile case throughout the three-month trial.

The court also dismissed some of the other arguments El Chapo raised for a new trial, including jury bias, his "deplorable" jail conditions, and the U.S. government selectively targeted him for prosecution.

Sinaloa Cartel Leader El Chapo Appeals 2019 Conviction

El Chapo, 64, is serving a life sentence in prison after being found guilty in 2019 of all 10 federal charges he faced. He was accused of illegally importing millions of kilos of cocaine from Mexico to the U.S., along with significant quantities of heroin and marijuana.

According to prosecutors, El Chapo allegedly used murder, torture, kidnapping, bribing officials, and "other illegal methods to control territory throughout Mexico and to subdue opposition," Vice reported.

The Sinaloa cartel boss is currently being held in Colorado's Supermax, the most secure federal prison in the U.S.

Last October, El Chapo's defense team urged the appeals court to overturn the ex-Sinaloa cartel leader's conviction, citing jury bias and the conditions at the prison.

During oral arguments in the same, Fernich said the conviction of the Mexican drug kingpin should be sent back to lower courts for further evaluation or overturned completely for two reasons.

First was the conditions and treatment that El Chapo experienced inside the prison. And second was a news report that during deliberations, jurors were exposed to salacious claims barred from the trial.

It included a claim that El Chapo has drugged and sexually abused teenage girls he referred to as "vitamins" that gave him energy, which the Sinaloa cartel leader's lawyer has denied.

El Chapo's lawyer noted that the Vice News article also mentioned an unnamed juror who said at least five fellow jurors followed media coverage of the trial and lied about it to presiding judge U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan.

The lawyer said Cogan erred by not ordering a hearing on the alleged jury misconduct.

"You (have) five jurors who don't know the meaning of an oath... If that doesn't cry out for instant inquiry, I don't know what does," Fernich earlier said.

Judges in high-profile cases usually instruct jurors not to follow their trials in newspapers, TV, and the internet.

However, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan found that Cogan was correct in finding that the jury at Guzman's 2019 trial was "not prejudiced by any extraneous information to which they might have been exposed," Al Jazeera reported.

The appeals court further noted that "any possible prejudice was harmless" given the overwhelming evidence of El Chapo's guilt.

The ruling added that Cogan conducted the trial with "diligence and fairness, after issuing a series of meticulously crafted pretrial rulings."

On Tuesday, El Chapo's lawyer Marc Fernich told Reuters that the former Sinaloa Cartel boss would seek Supreme Court review.

"We're disappointed that substantial allegations of grave jury misconduct continue to be swept under the rug... all it appears, because of the defendant's matchless notoriety," Fernich noted.

Imprisonment of Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo

The Sinaloa Cartel is considered to be one of the most powerful drug-trafficking syndicates in the world. The Mexican drug cartel has been known to carry out assassinations, murders, and torture to protect its turf.

The group was founded in the late 1980s and headed by El Chapo. Under El Chapo's leadership, the Sinaloa cartel earned its reputation through violence and outfought several rival groups.

Officials said the Sinaloa Cartel became the biggest supplier of illegal drugs to the U.S. during El Chapo's reign. Its revenue from drug sales ranged from $3 billion to $39 billion annually. El Chapo was once ranked as one of the world's richest men.

El Chapo was arrested in Guatemala and extradited to Mexico in 1993. He was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.

In 2001, El Chapo escaped from prison and was apprehended again in 2014 in Sinaloa, Mexico. He again escaped from prison through a tunnel the following year.

In January 2016, Mexican officials announced that El Chapo has been captured again. He was extradited to the U.S. the following year.

El Chapo was sentenced to spend the rest of his days in the ADX Florence "supermax" prison after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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