Federal Judge Brian Cogan, of the Eastern District Court in Brooklyn, New York, rejected the request of the defense of Genaro García Luna, to postpone the sentencing hearing until March 1, 2024, after having been found guilty of drug trafficking and criminal enterprise charges earlier this year.
“The defendant has not shown an adequate cause for such an extension,” Judge Cogan determined, after César de Castro, García Luna’s lawyer, sent two motions to the Judge arguing that he had new evidence in favor of his client. After being found guilty by a jury of various drug trafficking crimes in collaboration with the Beltrán Leyva faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, Judge Cogan had set the sentencing hearing for García Luna on September 27 of this year.
De Castro, in the motions delivered to the Court in Brooklyn in recent days, argued that officials, former officials, agents, and former law enforcement agents had given him thousands of pieces of information that proved the innocence of his defendant, and wanted to postpone the sentencing hearing.
Breon Peace, the federal prosecutor in charge of the García Luna case at the Department of Justice, gave Cogan a letter on July 5 in which he expressed his opposition to the postponement of the sentencing hearing for Calderón’s former ally.
Regarding De Castro’s argument for deferred sentencing, Prosecutor Peace stipulated that the defense had more than 3 years to present evidence in his favor, witnesses, and other exculpatory evidence before he was unanimously found guilty at trial.
In his rejection of the request by García Luna’s defense, the judge set a deadline of September 20 of this year to “receive an ex parte petition in support of the motion” for the request to postpone the process, a measure considered merely for processing.
Luna faces the possibility of being sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
