Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman stands accused of trafficking at least 200 tons of cocaine into the United States over multiple decades. That adds up to more than 181 million grams—181,436,948 to be exact—which is a whole lot of little plastic baggies. The alleged Mexican drug lord is also charged with killing thousands of people while heading up operations for the infamous Sinaloa cartel, according to a New York Times report, which describes the cartel's formidable trafficking capability using "an ever-changing fleet of trucks, planes, yachts, container ships and submersibles."

The Times story is actually primarily concerned with a new legal gambit El Chapo is rolling out. Guzman is challenging his extradition to Brooklyn on procedural grounds, with his American public defenders filing paperwork to the effect that the Mexican government had agreed only to send Guzman to Texas or California—where he'd been "identified in absentia"—but on the morning before he was set to be hauled off in "a small police jet," the government suddenly agreed to ship him off to the Big Apple. His lawyers dispute Mexican government officials could have followed proper protocol and obtained all the necessary paperwork in a matter of hours.

While the complaint doesn't directly dispute the meat of the case—that Guzman is a prolific international drug trafficker responsible for the deaths of thousands—it does challenge federal prosecutors' attempts to seize $14 billion in assets from El Chapo. The asset forfeiture claims weren't part of the original extradition papers, so his lawyers view the move as a breach of what's called "the Rule of Specialty," an extradition policy that "requires defendants to be tried only on the specific charges for which they are extradited." That's also what they believe was breached when the Mexican government sent El Chapo to Brooklyn.

This is apparently just the latest complex legal maneuver in a case that has moved from bold-face headlines to procedural mumbo-jumbo since Guzman arrived Stateside. While the lawyers fight it out, though, he'll be stuck in a jail described as "worse than Guantanamo. It is about as soul-negating existence as there is in this country in the federal system." So there's that.

From: Esquire US