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Claim Arises After El Chapo Trial That Jurors Violated Judge's Instructions

Claim Arises After El Chapo Trial That Jurors Violated Judge's Instructions
Claim Arises After El Chapo Trial That Jurors Violated Judge's Instructions

The two weeks after Guzmán’s three-month trial — which ended with a guilty verdict Feb. 12 — have been exceptionally busy. Allegations of jury misconduct have already emerged. The kingpin’s lawyers have signaled their intention to move to retry the case. And in a third strange twist, two of Guzmán’s sons were charged with drug crimes in a federal indictment.

The post-trial drama began Wednesday when one of the anonymous jurors emailed Keegan Hamilton, a Vice News reporter, and later told him — during an interview by video chat — that at least five members of the panel had disobeyed instructions from Judge Brian M. Cogan to ignore media coverage of the trial.

Throughout the trial, Cogan regularly cautioned jurors to avoid reading or viewing anything about the case outside the courtroom. On two occasions, he directly asked the jury whether they had followed his admonishments.

But according to the juror’s interview with Vice, the panel not only routinely read about the case on Twitter, but also lied to Cogan when he asked jurors if they had consulted any sources other than the witnesses at the trial. Some of the material the jurors were said to have encountered was devastating to Guzmán and had been withheld from them at trial, including allegations that the kingpin had drugged and raped young girls.

“You know how we were told we can’t look at the media during the trial?” the juror told Vice News. “Well, we did.”

The juror also told Vice that the deliberations took six days — somewhat longer than many had expected — mostly because of a single “stubborn holdout.” While all the panelists eventually agreed that Guzmán was guilty, some were concerned that, after his conviction, he would be sent to the country’s most secure federal prison, where he would likely spend his life in isolation.

“A lot of people were having difficulty thinking about him being in solitary confinement, because, well, you know, we’re all human beings,” the juror said.

Because the judge ordered the identities of the jurors to remain secret, it was impossible to independently verify the comments made to Vice.

Still, hours after the interview was published, one of Guzmán’s lawyers, A. Eduardo Balarezo, issued a statement calling the juror’s remarks “deeply concerning and distressing.” In the statement, Balarezo added that if, in fact, the remarks were true, “Joaquín did not get a fair trial.”

On Friday, Balarezo sent a letter to Cogan, announcing that Guzmán planned to file a motion for a new trial “based on the disclosures in the article” and to request a hearing “to determine the extent of the misconduct.” The letter asked for an extension of a month to file the motion.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment on the allegation that jurors did outside research. But even when jurors commit improprieties, it is not easy to overturn their verdict, legal experts said.

“The standard in federal court is a steep one for the defense,” said Josh Dubin, a lawyer who specializes in juror issues. “They have to demonstrate the jury was actually prejudiced by the outside information that they were exposed to. A showing of juror misconduct is not enough.”

Dubin added that judges have broad discretion about how to handle inquiries of jurors, and ultimately Cogan will decide how to proceed in the Guzmán case.

Jessica Roth, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, said that to protect “the sanctity of jury deliberations” federal rules of evidence limit the circumstances in which a judge can hear live testimony from a juror.

If the defense does make a motion to set aside the verdict, Cogan could question the juror in the Vice article only on the “limited issue of what the jurors were exposed to in the form of tweets and other press accounts,” Roth said.

She added: “The juror would not be permitted to testify about how those materials impacted the jury’s deliberations.”

Even as these questions about the jurors’ behavior emerged, the Justice Department announced it had charged two of Guzmán’s sons with distributing cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in the United States. It was the first time that U.S. prosecutors had accused the brothers, Joaquín Guzmán López and Ovidio Guzmán López, of drug-related crimes. They have yet to be arrested, and authorities believe they are in Mexico.

Over the weekend, there was more news related to Guzmán’s case. Mexican newspaper RíoDoce, which closely covers the drug-trafficking world, reported that the brother of Dámaso López Núñez, one of the kingpin’s former aides who testified against Guzmán at the trial, was killed by unknown gunmen in Mexico City.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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