Shivani Gadhavi
Published On: January 27, 2022 at 16:40 IST
A United States Appeals Court on January 25, 2022 upheld the ruling of conviction of the infamous Mexican drug smuggler Joaquin Guzman also known as El Chapo, given by a Trial Court.
Earlier there were Allegations made against the Trial Court Judge Brian Cogan that he gave permission to the Jury to allow hearing of faulty Evidence against El Chapo in the hearing of 2019.
The Panel of 2nd United States Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan stated that Judge Brian Cogan “conducted the three-month trial with diligence and fairness, after issuing a series of meticulously crafted pretrial rulings.”
In the present Appeal before the Circuit Court, the lawyers of El Chapo alleged that the order of Conviction by Trial Court was faulty as the Jury gave the decision on the basis of Evidence and news reports against El Chapo over Sexual Abuse allegations which were barred from the trial. The Appeal read that Judge Brian Cogan did not consider the usage of the evidence by the Jury and did not enquire about the news reports.
Jeffrey Lichtman, one of the lawyers of El Chapo in the case, stated that “The decision seems like it was decided and written before the argument even occurred. How can there be justice here when the jury was exposed to scurrilous claims against Mr. Guzman which were not part of the Government’s case?”
However, the Circuit Court stated that Judge Cogan was right in stating “that the jury was not prejudiced by any extraneous information to which they might have been exposed. Any possible prejudice was harmless in view of the overwhelming evidence of Guzman’s guilt.”