33 Killings? Judge in El Chapo Trial Tells Prosecutors to Cut a Few

NEW YORK — Even given the history of Mexico’s bloody drug wars, it was startling this month when federal prosecutors said they planned to offer evidence that Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the longtime leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, had taken part in no fewer than 33 murders.

That number was high enough that Tuesday the judge presiding over his trial in Brooklyn called it “way too much” and “out of control.”

Apparently exasperated at the prospect of testimony about so many slayings, the judge, Brian M. Cogan, told the government that it hardly needed to detail every murder that Guzmán, who is known as El Chapo, is suspected of committing to make its point that he used violence to run his operation.

The judge also warned the prosecution that if its presentation got too gory, he might cut it short.

“This is a drug conspiracy case that involves murders,” Cogan said at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. “I’m not going to let you try a murder conspiracy case that happens to involve drugs.

“Take your best shot and cut the rest,” he added.

Among the victims the jury will likely hear about is Israel Rincón Martínez, a member of a rival cartel who was targeted in 2010, court papers say, after killing the son of one of Guzmán’s closest allies.

Prosecutors are also expected to describe the execution of Francisco Aceves Urías, a Guzmán gunman known as Barbarino, who was slain in 2015 outside a restaurant in Culiacán, Mexico.

Brutal as they are, the 33 killings Guzmán stands accused of do not reflect the full scope of the bloodshed that prosecutors plan to introduce at his trial, which starts on Monday with jury selection. They are also poised to describe how the defendant killed — or ordered the deaths of — an untold number of law enforcement officers and people who betrayed him.

Everything about the Guzmán case has been supersized. Though the defendant’s nickname means “Shorty” in Spanish, he is a towering figure and described in court papers as the greatest criminal of the 21st century.

Hundreds of thousands of photographs and documents are likely to be introduced at his trial, which starts Monday with jury selection. At least 16 cooperating witnesses — mostly former underlings and rivals — are expected to appear on the witness stand and testify against him.

Facing this onslaught, Guzmán’s lawyers have spent the last few weeks complaining to Cogan that there is no way for them to digest the pile of evidence arrayed against their client and successfully defend him.

Earlier this month, they filed a motion accusing the government of inundating them with 117,000 audio recordings and 14,000 new pages of documents. To show how buried in paperwork they were, the lawyers brought the new documents to court Tuesday morning and lined them up in 23 white plastic binders, stacked, one next to the other, on a table.

But Cogan refused their request to delay the trial again. (It has already been adjourned two times.) He also bemoaned that the defense and prosecution seemed to be in state of high anxiety, peppering him with last-minute requests and pestering him with “panicked” phone calls, sometimes on weekends.

He asked both sides to settle down and implored them to lessen the tension.

“I don’t think litigating by frenzy and hysteria is an appropriate way to approach this case,” he said.