El Chapo’s beauty queen wife arrived in court flanked by their young twin daughters on Tuesday as the Mexican drug lord fights for the trial to be moved away from Brooklyn.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 28, strolled into the federal courthouse wearing denim jeans and a black-and-white checkered blouse tied at the waist with a Gucci belt while the two girls followed in matching floral dresses.
Lawyers for Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, 61, are fighting for his trial to be moved to another venue by arguing the huge security operation that surrounds him being transported to Brooklyn from Manhattan Detention Center makes him appear guilty.
Emma Coronel, right, wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman leaves federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York with her daughters on Tuesday
Aispuro, 28, strolled into the Brooklyn federal courthouse on Tuesday wearing denim jeans and a black-and-white checkered blouse tied at the waist with a Gucci belt while the two girls followed in matching floral dresses
Each time the drug lord appears in court, authorities transporting him to and from jail shut down the Brooklyn Bridge to make way for a police motorcade that includes a SWAT team and an ambulance, all tracked by helicopters.
The intense security measures have become enough of a public spectacle that Guzman’s lawyers are arguing it hurts his chances for a fair trial later this year in Brooklyn by prejudicing the jury pool.
They say the solution is to move the case to a Manhattan courthouse that’s connected to the jail where he’s held in solitary confinement.
The current drill creates the impression ‘that his man is guilty, that this man is dangerous,’ defense attorney William Purpura said on Tuesday following a pretrial hearing.
At the hearing, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said he was still considering the change of venue that prosecutors say isn’t necessary.
He also has yet to rule on a demand by Guzman’s lawyers that the government turn over evidence that could help his defense.
Coronel leaves federal court in Brooklyn on Tuesday following the hearing in which a judge said he was still considering the defense request to move El Chapo’s trial to Manhattan
The notorious drug lord is pictured on January 19, 2017 while being extradited to the United States
Some statements by witnesses ‘specifically indicate that Mr. Guzmán was not the leader, nor a leader, of the so-called Sinaloa Cartel or some other drug-trafficking organization,’ a defense filing says.
Guzman has pleaded not guilty to charges that his cartel laundered billions of dollars and oversaw a ruthless campaign of murders and kidnappings.
He faces life in prison if convicted at trial, which is set to begin in September and expected to last several weeks.
Authorities have justified the tight security for Guzman by noting that he has twice escaped from prison in Mexico. The second time, it was via a mile-long (1.6 kilometer-long) tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.
Since his extradition to New York in January, Guzman has repeatedly complained about his conditions of confinement.
Since his extradition in January 2017, El Chapo has been held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan (pictured in an undated file photo)
El Chapo pictured in 2014 after being captured for the first time by Mexican security personnel working alongside American agents
He has claimed in a letter to the court that the light in his cell where he spends 23 hours a day is on at all hours, and that the temperature is either ‘too hot’ or ‘too cold.’
As a result, Guzman said he’s had trouble sleeping, suffers constant headaches and vomits daily. ‘It is torture 24 hours a day,’ he wrote.
Aispuro has visited him several times since January this year, when he was moved from Mexico to the US to face trial.
In November, a judge granted their request for him to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
At that hearing, he smiled and waved at his wife and daughters who were in the courtroom.
Asked on Tuesday if Guzman has been permitted to watch Mexico play in the World Cup, Purpura shook his head and responded: ‘No. He wishes.’
This shows the entrance to the hole in the shower block at Almoloya prison in Mexico through which El Chapo escaped in July 2015
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