El Chapo Must Wait Another Year In Solitary Confinement Before NYC Trial Begins: Judge

LOWER MANHATTAN, NY — The city's most infamous prisoner, alleged Mexican coke kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, will have to wait almost a year — and maybe more — before his trial begins in Brooklyn federal court, a judge said Friday.

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El Chapo's trial has been tentatively set for April 16, 2018. However, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan reportedly said the start date could end up getting pushed even further.

Just a day before, the same judge denied a motion from El Chapo's lawyers asking that he be transferred from solitary confinement, where they said he's slowly losing his mind, to a normal prison cell.

The fallen Sinaloa Cartel boss is being held for 23 hours per day in a "small, windowless" room in the 10 South wing of the notoriously tough Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan — normally reserved for terrorism suspects. He has even begun "experiencing auditory hallucinations" in the form of phantom music, his lawyers claim.

El Chapo is facing 17 counts for allegedly running a cross-border network of drug dealers, runners, spies and hitmen that trafficked around 200 tons of cocaine into the U.S. from the 1980s through the 2000s. He faces life behind bars.

The 59-year-old defendant appeared at Brooklyn's federal courthouse in person Friday — on Mexico's day of independence, no less.

According to the Associated Press, he answered Cogan’s questions in Spanish (through an interpreter) and "spent half the hearing looking across the courtroom at his wife, who smiled and waved to him as she entered."

Cogan did give the couple one small gift in his decision the day before: While they can't talk in person, they can now exchange "personal" letters, the judge ruled.

Lead photo via ICE