'El Chapo' Guzmán would be ready to plead guilty in United States

Posted by DD Republished from material at Univision and the New York Times

 Chapo Guzman suggested to his lawyer, José Refugio Rodríguez, the possible option of reaching an agreement with the United States government to consent to extradition and not fight it in the courts of Mexico. ,  Chapo told his lawyer that he would plead guilty to the drug trafficking charges pending against him in the US.

 

ADX, (Supermax) The Alcatraz of the Rockies;  photo Jamey Stillings for The New York Times

BUT, and that is a big "but", there is basically one condition that would have to be agreed to by US authorities for him to consent to the extradition and plead guilty in the US courts - that he not be "held in a maximum-security prison where he would not have contact with other inmates or where he would not see the light of the sun for more than an hour a day."

Lawyer Rodriquez cautioned that in any plea discussions and Guzman withdrawing his opposition to extradition with US officials that the US would have to realize that his client was not on knees begging the US for a plea deal.  He said that he had 10 motions pending to fight the extradition.  He said they had a strong case that would take years to litigate. 

Rodriquez said he started working on the defense from extradition after Guzman was captured in Los Moches on the day  Guzman was notified that paper work was being prepared requesting his extradition.  While he has not had discussions with any agency or the Justice Dept. in the US, he said he had been talking and having discussion with a US Attorney for over .a year.    

His strongest argument at the present time is that the 2 requests for extradition from the state of Texas and California are invalid.  The requests were made in 2014 when representative for those states went to Mexico City and the paper work was done at the US Embassy.  But the paperwork was signed by Deputy Chief of Administrative Affairs rather than the Ambassador  as required by the rules of the  Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.  He seemed confident in the interview that he would win those cases on appeal   but it might take 3 years of litigation to have those requests for extradition thrown out.  Then the government would have to submit new requests with proper signatures and they would have to start all over again. 

That is why he insists that Chapo will "not be on his knees begging for help when negotiating a deal with the US.   Guzman also told Rodriquez that "after the trial they would have to stop coming after me".   Rodriquez did say that by making a deal on a guilty plea and extradition that it "did not necessarily" mean that Chapo would give information about corrupt politicians.  (In my opinion that is just a defense ploy to dangle the carrot in front of the US officials in trying to negotiate a deal).

Rodriquez gave the interview with Univision, his first on camera interview in his 36 years of practicing law. Rodriguez is defined as "a son of peasants" born in Culiacan, Sinaloa. He grew up and has worked most of his career from a small office in Apatzingan.  Watch univision's video interview here.

Univision reported that  this common origin allowed him to gain the trust of his client in informal talks about corridos songs, women and dolphins, with jokes and memories of his humble childhoods. Such empathy is part of the profile of Guzman, who has always preferred low-profile lawyers and provincial , rather than large firms in Mexico City.

Rodriguez has no secretary or driver.  His is .proud to have grown from a "collector huaraches (sandals)" in rural shops to the, "defender of Chapo Guzman,"  However he seeks in the interview to mark his distance from Chapo. and has never called him "boss".  When referring to Chapo, he never used this nickname that made him world famous, but always addressed him as "Joaquín" or "Mr. Guzman."   He Clarifies that he owes his livelihood to many clients.  

Although he has never given interviews in his career, despite having been involved in several of the most controversial cases of the recent judicial history of the country, their conversation is filled easily anecdotes, recreating details at the slightest provocation.  He blushes when he recalls that Chapo is definitely  his most famous client and had once told him that he  was "the best criminal lawyer in Mexico" .

The request seems to refer to the conditions at the federal ADX prison, known as the supermax or the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," in Florence, Colorado.   The facility holds many of the US's most violent and well-known criminals in relative isolation.  There, every inmate spends roughly 23 hours a day in solitary confinement

Inmates there include Osiel Cardenas, former head of the Gulf Cartel, "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and former FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who is serving a life sentence for espionage.

Also locked up in Supermax is the godfather of Cardenas' Gulf Cartel, Juan Garcia Abrego, who was convicted in Houston in 1996 and is serving multiple life sentences, along with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef; the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols; the underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; and the former Bonanno crime-family boss Vincent Basciano. Michael Swango, a serial-killing doctor who may have poisoned 60 of his patients, is serving three consecutive life sentences; Larry Hoover, the Gangster Disciples kingpin made famous by rappers like Rick Ross

The New York Times once described the daily life of inmates:

"Inmates spend their days in 12-by-7-foot cells with thick concrete walls and double sets of sliding metal doors (with solid exteriors, so prisoners can't see one another). ... Prisoners in the general population are allotted a maximum of 10 hours of exercise a week outside their cells, alternating between solo trips to an indoor "gym" (a windowless cell with a single chin-up bar) and group visits to the outdoor rec yard (where each prisoner nonetheless remains confined to an individual cage).  

outdoor "gym at ADX (photo courtesy of Amnesty International

 All meals come through slots in the interior door, as does any face-to-face human interaction (with a guard or psychiatrist, chaplain or imam). The Amnesty report said that ADX prisoners “routinely go days with only a few words spoken to them.”

 Robert Hood, the warden of the ADX from 2002 to 2005 told the NYT that when inmates complained to him, he would tell them, “This place is not designed for humanity,” he recalled. “When it’s 23 hours a day in a room with a slit of a window where you can’t even see the Rocky Mountains — let’s be candid here. It’s not designed for rehabilitation. Period. End of story.”

Even though El Chapo complained about his accommodations in the Altiplano Supermax in Mexico after the second or third day he was there, it is understandable why he would want to negotiate with the US for better accomodations than the Alcatraz of the Rockies.