- Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman was sentenced to life in prison by a New York Court in 2019
- Having twice escaped from Mexican prisoners, he has been held since 2019 at a supermax prison in Colorado known as the ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies’
- The New York judge who originally sentenced Guzman on Wednesday denied his request for an appeal, insisting his trial was fair and correct
A judge in New York City on Wednesday rejected a request from Joaquin ‘El Chapo‘ Guzman to review the 2019 ruling that sentenced him to life in prison.
Guzman, 66, for decades led the powerful Sinaloa cartel that is blamed for thousands of deaths in Mexico. He escaped from Mexican prisons twice and was finally captured and handed over to the United States in January 2017.
The Mexican drug lord had filed habeas corpus petitions – civil suits used to assess whether an imprisonment is lawful – and asked for legal representation in this appeal.
But Judge Brian Cogan, of the Eastern District of New York – who presided over his headline-grabbing trial in Brooklyn – rejected the request.
‘This was perhaps the most notorious criminal prosecution of the decade, and the charges of which petitioner was convicted could well have resulted in the death penalty but for the terms of his extradition,’ wrote Cogan in the ruling denying the petition.
The ruling rejects arguments that Guzman’s defense did not sufficiently explore a plea bargain and cites sealed evidence suggesting Guzman still controls up to billions of dollars in assets, even if they are not in his own name.
Cogan rejected the request for legal counsel, saying Guzman already had help from Mariel Colon Miro, a lawyer who has in recent years represented Guzman and his wife, Emma Coronel.
Coronel was sentenced in November 2021 to three years in a Californian prison for drug trafficking and money laundering.
She was released in mid-September; the 34-year-old celebrated her freedom in an Los Angeles nightclub visit that was pasted all over social media, with a party arranged by Colon Miro.
Coronel, a former teenage beauty pageant queen in Mexico and mother of Guzman’s twin daughters, was freed with four years of court supervision.
Cogan also questioned where Guzman had obtained the funds to pay his lawyers and why his wife – released from prison in September – has not had access to his assets.
Guzman is serving a life sentence in a Colorado prison known as the ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies,’ where prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day.
After twice escaping from maximum-security prisons in Mexico, including in a mile-long tunnel from his cell, Guzman was in 2017 deported to the United States and convicted on drug trafficking charges in 2019.
Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel remains one of the country’s two most powerful criminal organizations, alongside its main rival, the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
A powerful faction within the Sinaloa cartel is now led by Guzman’s four sons, one of whom has also been extradited to the United States.
Guzman’s mother, María Consuelo Loera, died in Sinaloa on December 10, at the age of 94.
At the end of November, the head of security for the Sinaloa Cartel, who was one of their main hitmen, was arrested.
Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, better known as ‘El Nini,’ was captured at a walled compound in Culiacan, Mexico.
He was head of security for four of Guzman’s sons — Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, Joaquin Guzman Lopez and Ovidio Guzman Lopez — known as the ‘Chapitos.’
Ovidio was arrested in January 2023 and is currently in Chicago, awaiting trial.
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