Lawyer for famous drug dealer "El Chapo" calls for a retrial
The lawyer for Mexican drug dealer Joaquin Guzman, better known as "El Chapo," said his client needs to be retried because juries lied to the judge about following up on media reports during his trial.
The lawyer for the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel focused in his defense on an article published by VICE News in which an anonymous juror said that he and other jurors monitored media coverage of the trial but denied it before the judge, violating their oath, according to the New York Daily News.
"If it turns out that five or six jurors came together and lied directly to the judge in the middle of the trial, that's something you can't ignore," Guzman's attorney, Mark Furnish, said on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
The Vice News report forms the basis for much of the imprisoned drug dealer's appeal.
Guzman was sentenced to life imprisonment in Brooklyn federal court in 2019 for his role as the head of the Sinaloa cartel and orchestrated decades-old plots to smuggle billions of dollars worth of drugs into the United States.
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