NEW YORK _ The American-born, beauty queen wife of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was caught skirting the rules at his drug trafficking trial by using a forbidden cellphone, a judge said Monday.
Emma Coronel got a slap on the wrist from U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan as her husband's trial entered its third week in federal court in Brooklyn.
Cogan said he was informed "there's video in the court of her having a cellphone she's not supposed to have."
Coronel allegedly was spotted scrolling on the banned device last week. Somehow, the phone made its way around the small army of security officers surveilling the proceeding at any given time.
Cogan ordered Coronel to go back through the magnetometers outside the courtroom before a cooperating witness shrouded in secrecy was due to take the stand Monday afternoon.
Security is so tight at the drug lord's high-profile trial that juror names are a tightly guarded secret and a courtroom sketch artist was ordered to render the mystery witness without any identifying features.
Coronel, 29, is a controversial figure in Mexico, popular to some for her fashion sense and family loyalty _ but criticized by others for her husband's alleged crimes and the lavish lifestyle she promotes on social media.
An over-the-top Barbie-themed party she threw for the couple's twin daughters in September turned a ballroom and garden into a life-size Barbie Dreamhouse complete with a mini roller-coaster.
Before his trial started, Guzman pleaded with the judge for permission to hug his wife over the courtroom railing.
His lawyer Mariel Colon Miro argued Guzman needed the "humanitarian gesture" to maintain his sanity.
"Mr. Guzman has been confined to a very small, windowless cell for 23 hours a day ... Except for legal visits, Mr. Guzman has been completely isolated. As a result, Mr. Guzman's mental and emotional health have deteriorated," the lawyer wrote in a letter to the court.
"It is of dire concern that Mr. Guzman's deterioration of his mental and emotional health could lead potentially to a problem in his ability to effectively assist in his defense," she wrote.
The judge denied the request.
Guzman, 61, has pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen counts of drug trafficking, conspiracy, firearms offenses and money laundering.
The man who rose from a peasant farmer to become head of Mexico's powerful Sinaloa drug cartel is accused of playing a role in at least 30 murders, prosecutors said.
He famously staged two elaborate escapes from Mexican prisons, including one with a secret subterranean tunnel engineered with a mile-long track and custom motorbike.
"I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats," Guzman famously told the actor Sean Penn in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview, when he was still a fugitive.
Guzman, whose nickname translates to "Shorty," faces life in prison if convicted as charged.
