A lawyer for the kidnapped mistress of Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman has urged judges to be lenient with the 29-year-old beauty queen who faces a lifetime behind bars.
El Chapo's wife Emma Coronel Aispuro, 29, attended her husband's trial and watched from the public gallery. She was not charged with any offence and is considering returning to Mexico following her husband's trial in New York.
However, his mistress, Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez, 29, who was kidnapped by El Chapo's Sicarios on the crime lord's orders, is facing a life sentence.
Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez, pictured, was kidnapped on the orders of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman after he saw her in a magazine while he was on the run. He forced the 29-year-old beauty queen to become his lover. She now faces life in prison having been convicted of being involved in his massive drug operation
Emma Coronel Aispuro 29, who is married to El Chapo, attended his trial in New York She is expected to return to Mexico as her husband faces a life behind bars
Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, pictured following his arrest in 2014, faces a life in jail in a federal super max prison after his was convicted of operating a massive drugs network in New York
Ms Sanchez' lawyer Heather Shaner told The Times: ' While [Guzmán] was in hiding he would look at photographs of beauty queens in magazines and then send his henchmen to kidnap them and hold them so that he could have his way with them.'
Ms Shaner said Ms Sanchez had been brainwashed after being kidnapped by the gang.
Her colleague Carmen Hernandez said she hoped the judge would consider her client's upbringing and her kidnap when it came to sentencing.
Guzman was convicted in New York of running an international drug smuggling operation following a three-month trial.
The evidence was packed with Hollywood-style tales of grisly killings, political payoffs, cocaine hidden in jalapeno cans, jewel-encrusted guns and a naked escape with his mistress through a tunnel.
Guzman faced a drumbeat of drug-trafficking and conspiracy convictions that could put the 61-year-old escape artist behind bars for decades in a maximum-security US prison selected to thwart another of the breakouts that embarrassed his native country.
New York jurors whose identities were kept secret reached a verdict after deliberating for six days, sorting through what authorities called an 'avalanche' of evidence gathered since the late 1980s that Guzman and his murderous Sinaloa drug cartel made billions in profits by smuggling tons of cocaine, heroin, meth and marijuana into the US.
During the trial, El Chapo, in the sketch, waved to his wife who was in the public galllery
Evidence showed drugs poured into the US through secret tunnels or hidden in tanker trucks and railway carriages passing through legitimate
