OAN’s Brooke Mallory
3:44 PM – Thursday, December 28, 2023
In a not-so-surprising outcome, notorious drug lord Joaquin Guzman, most well-known by his moniker “El Chapo,” lost his appeal to have the 2019 ruling that sentenced him to life in prison overruled by a U.S. court on Tuesday.
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Judge Brian Cogan of the U.S. District Court rejected several arguments made in an attempt to overturn his convictions for the numerous offenses he committed, including running a criminal organization, conspiring to sell drugs, unlawful use of a firearm, and money laundering.
“Petitioner has not demonstrated adequate grounds for the appointment of counsel, so that motion is denied. His habeas corpus petition is also without merit, and it is therefore also denied,” Cogan wrote in his filing.
Guzman was named the “principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise—the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as the Sinaloa Cartel” by the Justice Department back in 2019.
“Guzman Loera enforced his will and maintained control of his drug empire through an army of lethal bodyguards and a sophisticated communications network,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote.
Guzman claimed that he was not given a fair opportunity to reach a plea deal.
However, Cogan denied this, writing in the most recent filing that even if Guzman’s claim was accurate, his attorney did not try to reach a settlement “because [the] petitioner didn’t want it to, and because the likelihood of obtaining a plea agreement was virtually nil.”
Furthermore, he asserted that it is impractical to believe that a plea deal was even possible in this case.
“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, which restricted the Government to seeking life imprisonment,” Cogan wrote.
“The top count of the indictment, the continuing criminal enterprise charge, of which petitioner was convicted, itself carried a mandatory life sentence. There is thus no reason to believe that petitioner would have obtained any better result than he did even if he wanted his attorneys to try to negotiate on his behalf, which he did not,” the judge added.
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