Judge says Mexican ex-official tried to bribe inmates in a bid for new US drug trial

NEW YORK -- A former high-ranking Mexican official tried to bribe fellow inmates into making false statements to support his bid for a new trial in a U.S. drug case, a judge found Wednesday in rejecting Genaro García Luna 's request.

García Luna, who once held a cabinet-level position as Mexico's top public safety official, was convicted last year of taking payoffs to protect the drug cartels he was supposed to go after. He is awaiting sentencing and denies the charges.

Prosecutors discovered his alleged jailhouse bribery efforts and disclosed them in a court filing earlier this year, citing such evidence as a former cellmate's handwritten notes and covert recording of a conversation with García Luna. His lawyers said the allegations were bogus and the recording was ambiguous.

But U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan found them believable.

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

He also turned down defense lawyers' other arguments for a new trial, including assertions that some prosecution witness gave false testimony at trial and that the defense wasn't given some potentially helpful information that prosecutors were obliged to turn over.

“We are extraordinarily disappointed with the court’s decision," defense lawyer César de Castro said, adding that “the court did not address fundamental problems with this prosecution.”

García Luna plans to appeal, his lawyer said.

Prosecutors declined to comment on Wednesday's decision.

After the verdict, defense attorneys submitted a sworn statement from an inmate who said he got to know a prosecution witness at a Brooklyn federal jail before García Luna's trial.

The inmate said that the witness vowed he was “going to screw” García Luna by testifying against him, and that the witness talked on a contraband cellphone to a second government witness.

Defense lawyers said the alleged comments buttressed their claim that García Luna was framed by cartel members and corrupt officials seeking leniency for themselves. The purported cellphone conversations also could have contradicted prosecutors' argument that the witnesses were credible because they hadn't talked in years, so couldn't have coordinated their stories.

But prosecutors said in a March court filing that the inmate who gave the sworn statement has a psychotic disorder with hallucinations. In government interviews, the witnesses denied the alleged communications, according to prosecutors.

And, they said, García Luna, who's at the same Brooklyn lockup, offered other inmates as much as $2 million to make similar claims about communications among the witnesses. He also asked one of the inmates to persuade yet another to say he'd overheard a cellphone conversation involving the second government witness about concocting a false claim of having bribed García Luna, according to prosecutors.

The intermediary, whom defense lawyers identified as a former García Luna cellmate, made the notes and recording.

The judge concluded that García Luna's lawyers didn't know about his endeavors.

García Luna, 56, was convicted on charges that include engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise. He faces at least 20 years and as much as life in prison at his sentencing Oct. 9.

García Luna was Mexico's public security secretary from 2006 to 2012.