James Cohen was quoted in a USA Today article about Sean Penn’s interview with Mexican drug cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Although Mexican officials reportedly would like to talk to Penn and del Castillo about their meeting with El Chapo, it is not clear what they did violated any Mexican law.
But it is entirely clear they violated no American law, says James Cohen, a criminal law expert and professor at Fordham Law School in New York.
“The law doesn’t prohibit anything he did nor does it impose upon him any duty to do anything different — it’s just that simple,” Cohen says. “The bottom line is that what he did is simply not illegal.”
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But Cohen says neither journalists nor citizens who speak with a fugitive have a duty to do law enforcement’s job. “There’s no ambiguity about this whatsoever,” Cohen says.
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Although some legal pundits on cable news raised the possibility that Penn could be charged with “accessory after the fact,” Cohen dismisses that.
“Where’s the beef”? he scoffed. Penn did not offer to hide El Chapo himself, he committed no overt act nor did he enter into a conspiracy to do so. “If he had, then he could be in trouble but he didn’t do anything like that here.”