Jurors in El Chapo case ends first day of deliberations with no verdict

The US jury in the trial of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most notorious kingpin, has deliberated for its first full day without returning a verdict.

Guzman, 61, is accused of leading Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, which became one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world. He twice escaped from prison in Mexico and will face the possibility of life in a U.S. prison if convicted.

Guzman, who has escaped two maximum-security jails and became one of the world's most-wanted fugitives, is charged with 10 criminal counts in the trial that began last November in New York.

After nearly three months of testimony about a vast drug-smuggling conspiracy steeped in violence, the jury began deliberations on Monday and ended their first day of deliberations without a verdict.

Prosecutors said he trafficked tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine into the United States over more than two decades, consolidating his power in Mexico through murders and wars with rival cartels.

The defence argued that Guzman was set up as a “fall guy” by Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a drug kingpin from Sinaloa who remains at large.

In closing arguments, prosecutor Andrea Goldbarg told the jury that Guzman had proved his own guilt by plotting an escape from the US prison in which he had been held since 2017. He has been in solitary confinement ever since.

After some three decades running drugs, Guzman was caught in his native northwestern state of Sinaloa in January 2016.

Just days after his 2016 capture, Guzman's larger-than-life reputation was sealed when US movie star Sean Penn published a lengthy account of an interview he conducted with the drug lord, which the Mexican government said was "essential" to his capture a few months later.

"I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana than anybody else in the world," Penn said Guzman told him at the drug lord's mountain hideout.

"I have a fleet of submarines, aeroplanes, trucks, and boats."