Wednesday, November 6

La Opinión Hoy: Judge rejects motion by “El Chapo” Guzmán

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By Andrea Espinoza

Dec 28, 2023, 16:41 PM EST

The arguments about alleged poor legal advice by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán that aimed to reduce his sentence were rejected by Judge Brian Cogan, who also did not consider a possible plea agreement. Jesús García, journalist specialized in immigration policy and national affairs from La Opinión, expanded this information a little in our podcast “La Opinión Hoy”.

“These motions have been going on between June and July, which They are very formal motions because they are letters that were sent directly to the judge. that they had to have a translation process because he wrote them himself and they had to be translated into English with a translator, let’s say authorized by the court and here There was a problem because Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán no longer has a lawyer to represent him in the Eastern District Court in New York, so one of the requests was precisely that an ex-officio judge be assigned to him.Part of those motions is also to reduce his sentence because he accuses that there was poor legal advice and well, Judge Brian Cogan responds to several of these motions. On December 26, which were only recently published and where establishes that Guzmán due to the amount of money that he has and that was demonstrated in the trial, he had access to billions of dollars, in addition to the fact that he hired teams of very high level lawyers in the United States during his trial and during the appeal processWell, not to mention he met the requirements for a person who precisely needs a court-appointed lawyer, so he rejected that motion. That is one of the most interesting aspects because obviously El Chapo seems desperate because what he is looking for is to reduce his sentence and therefore also improve the prison conditions they face.“García explained.

Lawyer Mariel Colón stopped representing “El Chapo” in January 2023although she only offers advice on the translation of documents that the drug trafficker himself sent to Judge Cogan in his own handwriting.

In one of his arguments, “El Chapo” affirms that among the errors of his lawyers was not having considered a plea agreementto achieve certain conditions with prosecutors that could give him the “possibility of being acquitted.”

However, Judge Cogan reminded “El Chapo” that the plea deal process was exhausted in court and during the trial.

“This Court will assume for the purposes of this decision that, in fact, the petitioner’s judicial team made no such effort [de acuerdo de culpabilidad]. But the record shows that this was both because the petitioner did not want it, and because the probability of obtaining a plea agreement was practically zero,” the judge said.

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