NEW YORK _ A lawyer for accused cocaine kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman went too far in an opening statement that was heavy on speculation and light on proof, a Brooklyn federal judge ruled Wednesday in a sharp rebuke.
The pointed remarks from Judge Brian Cogan to defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman came after federal prosecutors filed a motion demanding the attorney's entire initial address to the jury be stricken from the record. Cogan declined to go that far, but agreed the lawyer's remarks went too far.
"Your opening statement handed out a lot of promissory notes that your case is not going to cash," Cogan told Lichtman. "So stop."
Lichtman's remarks to the anonymous panel that will determine El Chapo's fate went "far afield of direct or circumstantial proof," the judge said. Prosecutors charged they were "permeated with improper argument, unnoticed affirmative defenses and inadmissible hearsay."
Cogan made a point of addressing the jurors and advising them not to read anything into what sound like "outrageous" defense theories.
Lichtman, in his Tuesday opening, said Americans prosecutors dreamed "for decades" of a shot at getting Guzman in court. He also identified another reputed Mexican drug dealer as the real head of the Sinaloa Cartel, and alleged that hundreds of million of dollars in bribes were paid to Mexico's presidents over the years.
"This is a case which will require you to open your minds to the possibility that government officials at the very highest level can be bribed, can conspire to commit horrible crimes; that American law enforcement agents can also be crooked," Lichtman said.
Current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and ex-President Felipe Calderon angrily denounced the lawyer's allegations as bogus.
In their motion, prosecutors argued, "The portion of defense counsel's opening statement made in this case yesterday by Mr. Lichtman was so rife with impropriety that the court should strike it in its entirety."
Lichtman, finishing up his opening statement Wednesday, mentioned his client's infamous interview with actor Sean Penn for Rolling Stone magazine. The defense attorney suggested his client fed Penn a succession of tall tales because Guzman enjoyed the attention and notoriety.
"Why else would someone do something as insane as that?" asked Lichtman about his client's admissions. "In the end, you're going to have to trust the government's cooperating witnesses _ not just a Sean Penn tape."
The defense attorney also asked the jurors to think of El Chapo as a family relative, not an outlaw, when they listen to the trial testimony.
"Try as you might, a little part of each and every one of you thinks he's guilty of something," Lichtman said. "The name is that powerful. ... You wouldn't want your loved ones judge through their name, or their infamy, or what is said in the press."
Guzman is accused of running one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in the world: a murderous, multibillion-dollar empire that exported enough cocaine for every American to snort a line.
"Money, drugs, murder _ a vast global drug trafficking organization," a prosecutor told the Brooklyn Federal Court jury Tuesday. "That is what this case is about, and that is what the evidence in this trial will prove. We are confident you will find that the defendant is guilty of all the crimes charged."
