Famous Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman appealed Friday against his sentence last year in life in the United States, his lawyers announced.
The 245-page petition was filed in an appeals court in New York, where the proceedings “could take between two and five years,” “Chapo” lawyer Mariel Colon Miro told AFP. “We are very optimistic” to get a new trial, she said.
According to her, the first trial should be canceled because one of the jurors later told the media that he and several of his colleagues had, while they were sitting, consulted information on the case in the press and on the networks. social, which was forbidden to them.
The lawyer also maintains that the total isolation to which “El Chapo” has been subjected since his extradition to the United States in January 2017 prevented him from properly preparing his defense.
Co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, “El Chapo” was considered at the time as the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. He was sentenced in July 2019 to life imprisonment by a federal tribubal in Brooklyn for having transported at least 1,200 tonnes of cocaine to the United States over a quarter of a century.
Since his conviction, “El Chapo” has been held in a high security Colorado prison.