No new trial for former Mexico drug czar, US judge says

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former top Mexican law enforcement official convicted last year on U.S. corruption charges does not deserve a new trial, after he tried to bribe a fellow jail inmate to lie that the government's case was tainted, a U.S. judge said on Wednesday.

Genaro Garcia Luna, who led Mexico's fight against drug cartels as public security minister from 2006 to 2012, was found guilty by a Brooklyn jury in February 2023 of taking millions of dollars in bribes from cartels in exchange for shielding members from arrest and allowing safe passage for cocaine shipments.

Lawyers for Garcia Luna urged U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan to grant a new trial, saying they found evidence that key witnesses lied and that prosecutors' cooperating witnesses had improperly communicated with each other before trial.

But the judge said Garcia Luna offered a fellow inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn $2 million to corroborate another inmate's false claim that two cooperating witnesses had spoken with each other on contraband cellphones.

"This was a clear scheme by defendant to obstruct justice through bribery," Cogan wrote.

A lawyer for Garcia Luna did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cogan said Garcia Luna's lawyers were not aware their proposed evidence was false.

Garcia Luna, 56, could face life in prison when he is sentenced on Oct. 9.

The former drug czar is one of the highest-ranking Mexican officials accused of ties to drug trafficking.

Prosecutors said he was on the payroll of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who once led the Sinaloa cartel, even as he worked closely with U.S. counter-narcotics and intelligence agencies, including by seizing some drugs to keep up appearances.

Guzman is serving a life sentence at a maximum-security prison in Colorado after being convicted of drug trafficking in 2019.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)