Thread by @alanfeuer

As delibs at the Chapo trial enter a 3rd day the jury will hear readbacks of testimony from Juan Aguayo, a border agent who helped seized 400 kgs of pot in panga boats off the Calif. coast in 2012. It was also get giant binders w/the full testimony of Alex & Jorge Ciifuentes.

What does this mean?
It's possible the jury has already decided the several coke charges after tons of evidence & is trying to decide the pot charge.
The Cifuenteses had perhaps the most aggressive cross-examinations of any trial witness. The jury may want to reconsider them.

This jury has shown as a deep knowledge of the case, as @keegan_hamilton noted last night. In some case, jurors knew precisely what they wanted to see--down to the exact exhibit number. The fact that they want ALL of the Cifuenteses testimony suggest broader questions about them.

Will jurors actually read through the entirety of the two 5-inch-thick plastic binders of photocopied material containing the Cifuentes batch load that two federal agents brought into the courtroom yesterday? Remains to be seen. That might take a while.

What else will they ask for?
We'll soon see...

In terms of punishment, Chapo faces life in prison on the charges in his indictment. That life sentence will become mandatory if the jury checks off three boxes underneath the top charge of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise.

1. Did any of the coke deals he made involve more than 150 kgs? (All of them did.)
2. Did the enterprise earn $10 million or more in one 12-month period? (There was repeated testimony that the cartel earned $100s of millions all the time)
3. Was Chapo a leader of the enterprise?

One thought on the jurors:
They haven't yet asked for any evidence related to Mayo Zambada who figured centrally in the defense's theory that Chapo wasn't the real mastermind of the cartel. They seem more interested in looking for proof about the govt's allegations.

Another crazy note from the jurors in the Chapo trial. I haven't said this yet, but this one does not look good for the government.

The note had two parts:
1. Jurors asked for the ENTIRE testimony of three of the govt's chief witnesses: Rey Zambada; his nephew, Vicente Zambada; and Chapo's top lieutenant Damaso Lopez.
That amounts to numerous days of testimony--so many it will take a while just to assemble it

Even more ominous in some ways was Part 2 which read in full:
"If members of a drug cartel are killed from an opposing cartel for personal reasons does that constitute as a drug trafficking crime?"

This of course suggests that jurors have questions about one or more of the dozens of murders Chapo's been accused of ordering or committing.

One leaps to mind as possibly personal.
In 2004, the govt says, Chapo had Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes gunned down outside a movie theater in Culiacan. The murder followed failed attempts to reach a truce. At one point, Rodolfo is said to have refused to shake Chapo's hand.
Personal?

After consulting with the parties, Judge Cogan instructed the jurors that a murder should not be thought of as a drug crime if it was committed "wholly for personal reasons" that weren't related to drug trafficking at all.

It's also conceivable the killing of Juan Guzman Rocha, Chapo's cousin known as Juancho, could be thought of as personal. According to testimony, Chapo believed Juancho was a snitch. Is that a personal or a professional betrayal?

To return to the requested testimony, the jury has now asked for the ENTIRE testimonies of 5 of the govt's 14 cooperating witnesses. We don't know why or what they want to read over, but it is definitely unusual.

In a second note, the jury also asked--for the 3rd day in a row--to be released at 4:15 pm. They indicated as well that they're not inclined to deliberate on Friday, meaning this could stretch into next week...

More on Rodolfo Carrillo.
In the early 2000s, his workers and Chapo's workers began having turf issues around Navolto, leading to a series of sit downs with cartel leaders. Vicente testified about these meetings where Chapo was portrayed as trying to work things out.

But Rodolfo was stubborn & Chapo ultimately went to his fellow bosses, including Mayo Zambada, to get permission to kill Rodolfo. The hit took place outside a movie theater @ a shopping center in Culiacan in 2004. Rodolfo's wife was also killed and his security chief was injured.

The murder led to one of the first major rifts in the Sinaloa cartel. Rodolfo's brother, Vicente, left and joined forces w/a rival cartel, Los Zetas. A violent war ensued w/Chapo and Mayo on one side and the Zetas and the Carrillos on the other.

The most powerful Carrillo Fuentes brother, Amado, the Lord of the Skies, was by then long dead, having passed away during plastic surgery in 1997. Amado had been a close ally of Mayo for years and also worked closely with Chapo before his death. That made the split more poignant

The bottom line is:
No matter which murder the jury is trying to figuring out with this question, their note suggests that a verdict may not be coming for a while.

There is (of course!) another theory. The murders are all contained in the last of the 27 sub-counts in the indictment’s 1st count. Count 1 is the big one. If the jury is close to deciding on Count 1, that suggests something different.

Oddly, the jurors don’t have to find that Chapo committed all of the murders he’s been accused of to find that the murder sub-count has been proved. Why focus on the personal aspect of a killing (or killings)? Some were clearly professional. Why not focus on those?

Day 3 of Chapo jury deliberations has ended. Still no verdict.
The takeaway so far?
The jury is clearly scrutinizing the evidence. But of course scrutiny of the evidence does not bode well for Chapo, given it's so overwhelmingly against him.

It can't feel good for the prosecution team to have their slam-dunk, tied-up-every-which-way case being put through its paces, but there's really only one way this trial is headed in the end. It's just a matter of how long it takes to get there.

You could argue the jury is looking hard at the evidence because there's so much of it. All the witnesses whose testimony they asked for today (Rey & Vicente Zambada and Damaso Lopez) talked about the Rodolfo Carrillo murder. But Rey was on the stand 3 months ago. Its a long time

Is there a point where a lot of damning evidence is too much damning evidence & the jury starts to get mired in the details losing sight of the bigger picture?
I'm not saying that's happening now but the number of charges and amount of proof needed to them support them is a lot.