Feds: 'El Chapo's' lawyers helped alleged drug lord have cellphone contact with wife
by Kevin McCoy
USA Today
November 27, 2018
NEW YORK – Federal prosecutors are seeking legal sanctions against Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's defense team for allegedly violating security rules by helping the wife of the accused Mexican drug lord contact him with a forbidden cellphone.
The alleged incident violated the security restrictions surrounding Guzmán's criminal trial in Brooklyn federal court, prosecutors said in a Tuesday letter to U.S. District Court Judge Brian Cogan.
Guzmán is accused of heading the Sinaloa Cartel, a violent criminal organization prosecutors say shipped tons of narcotics to the United States. He is charged with 17 criminal counts including drug trafficking, conspiring to murder rivals and money laundering.
The security restrictions are based on a Department of Justice determination "that communications and contacts between the defendant and other persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to others," U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue's office wrote in a heavily redacted letter.
The measures "specifically" restrict Guzmán from having telephone contact with his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, prosecutors wrote.
Cogan, who is presiding over the trial, barred Guzmán's request for a brief hug with his wife immediately before the trial began this month.
Despite the security measures, prosecutors wrote, someone whose identity was redacted from the letter appears to have "used cellular telephones in concert with an attorney visit to the defendant following two trial days last week to facilitate unauthorized and ... impermissible contact" between Guzmán and his wife.
Coronel has attended the trial. Guzmán has waved to his wife at least twice when entering Cogan's courtroom.
In most cases, U.S. Marshals Services rules bar nonattorneys from bringing cellphones into the Brooklyn courthouse. But Cogan on Monday notified prosecution and defense lawyers that security staffers had seen Coronel using a cellphone inside the courthouse, the letter said.
Images from the courthouse video surveillance system "confirmed that Coronel did possess a cellular telephone on Nov. 19," prosecutors wrote.
Images documenting the violation were redacted from the letter. A review of similar video footage for Nov. 20, the day that courthouse security personnel reported seeing Coronel with a cellphone, did not turn up confirming images, prosecutors wrote.
Coronel was required to go through a metal detector just outside the courtroom just before the testimony Monday of Miguel Ángel Martínez, an alleged former top lieutenant to Guzmán. He is testifying against Guzmán as a government witness.
To guard against the possibility that Guzmán loyalists might target Martinez, Cogan barred courtroom sketch artists from depicting the witness' face or hairstyle in their drawings.
Cogan is expected to discuss the motion for sanctions against the defense team during Tuesday's trial session, which is scheduled to feature more testimony by Martinez.
No comments:
Post a Comment