Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo Makes New Appeal to Overturn Life Sentence to Get Out of Prison

Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera is reportedly asking a court to have his life sentence overturned.

According to ABC7 Chicago, El Chapo is convincing the court that he was wronged by U.S. prosecutors in his racketeering conspiracy case. The Sinaloa cartel boss reportedly filed a new court request signed by himself, not an attorney, and asked to be freed or retried.

ABC7 legal analyst Gil Soffer, who has reviewed El Chapo's filing for the I-Team, said: "Presumably, he's got some advice behind the scenes. But yeah, on the face of it, he's applying for it himself."

In the habeas corpus petition filed by the Sinaloa cartel boss, Soffer noted that El Chapo criticized his lawyers and claimed unfair extradition by the U.S. as well as prosecutors' unlawful treatment.

Soffer, a former federal prosecutor, noted that El Chapo "lost his trial, [and] he lost on appeal." However, he said this was "a mechanism" for the Mexican drug lord "to say, despite all that, I'm still entitled to a reversal of my conviction and a new trial because my constitutional rights were violated."

According to Soffer, El Chapo must show that his constitutional rights were indeed violated, and the outcome of his trial would have been different if they had not been violated, which "is a very high hurdle to clear," Borderland Beat reported.

Arrest of Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo

El Chapo was sentenced to spend the rest of his days in the ADX Florence "supermax" prison in Colorado after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 on multiple drug-related charges.

The infamous Sinaloa Cartel boss was first arrested in Guatemala in 1993 and extradited to Mexico, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder and drug trafficking.

But in 2001, the Mexican drug kingpin escaped from prison. He was arrested again in 2014 in Sinaloa and again escaped from prison through a tunnel the following year.

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

El Chapo is serving a life sentence in prison after being found guilty 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.

In January, a federal appeals court in New York upheld the life sentence of El Chapo after his request for a new trial was dismissed.

In their decision, the three judges rejected some of El Chapo's arguments, including jury bias, "deplorable" jail conditions, and the U.S. government selectively targeting him for prosecution.

Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo Complained About Mistreatment in Colorado Prison

El Chapo has complained about being mistreated in the Colorado prison he's currently being held in. In a seven-page letter he previously sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal, he said the treatment he received in the maximum-security prison was "cruel and unfair," and it was taking a toll on his health.

El Chapo wrote in English that due to the treatment at the prison, he now suffers from "headaches, memory loss, muscle cramps, stress, and depression."

He also made several demands, such as being able to communicate with other inmates verbally. El Chapo claimed that since arriving in the U.S., he had not been allowed to speak to his wife.

The long list of his complaints also includes being served little food, the "extremely hot" temperature that makes his blood pressure rise, and suffering from a fungal infection in his foot due to sharing nail clippers with other inmates.

The Sinaloa Cartel boss added that prison officials enter his cell "several times a week to do routine searches when they move and touch all my belongings." El Chapo then asked to be treated better and that the conditions in his cell be improved.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: El Chapo Making Desperate Play to Get out of Prison - From ABC 7 Chicago