'El Chapo' lawyer argues for new trial based on report that jurors lied and read press coverage during trial
NEW YORK — Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s lawyer argued Monday that the murderous cartel boss needs a new trial because jurors lied to the judge about following media reports during his trial.
Guzman's case is currently on appeal and the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel’s lawyer focused his arguments on a VICE News article in which an anonymous juror said they and other jurors followed coverage of the trial and but denied it to the judge, violating their oath.
“If it turns out five or six jurors got together and lied, right to the judge’s face in the middle of a trial, that’s not something you can just brush off,” Marc Fernich, Guzman’s lawyer, said Monday in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
The VICE News article forms the basis of a large part of the drug lord’s appeal.
It cites a sole anonymous juror who claimed that numerous jurors in the case read news articles about Guzman's alleged sexual encounters with underage girls as well as an affair between one of his lawyers and a former client. Neither of those topics was allowed into the trial.
The feds argued that the allegations about juror impropriety in the article weren’t enough to overturn the guilty verdict.
“The evidence here is not competent. It’s anonymously sourced,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Hiral Mehta. “It’s uncorroborated. It’s hearsay and double hearsay.”
The judge who presided over the case previously dismissed the allegations, allowing the verdict to stand.
Fernich on Monday called for an inquiry into the allegations, saying that the jurors could be brought in and questioned about whether or not they spoke with VICE News.
One appellate judge even speculated that the VICE News reporter who broke the story could be hauled into court and possibly jailed “for civil contempt when he refuses to divulge his source.”
Guzman was sentenced to life plus 30 years in Brooklyn Federal Court in 2019 for his role at the top of the Sinaloa cartel, operating the drug conspiracy for decades and shipping billions of dollars' worth of illegal drugs into the United States.
The judges did not immediately rule on the appeal Monday.
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