Defending Colombians

had a grim win. There would be more.

His client David William Crist got 30 years — not death — for hiring a pair of hit men to gun down his younger brother for their inheritance. Michael Darryl Henry got an additional decade in prison — but not death — for fatally stabbing a fellow inmate.

The toughest cases, Purpura believed, deserve a tough defense.

Tokens from these cases came to fill his office: a boyhood photo of Patrick Byers Jr., who got four life sentences for the contract killing of a federal witness; a blanket crocheted in prison by the “Savage of Philadelphia,” a gang boss who ordered his underlings to firebomb a witness’ home, incinerating women and children. One Christmas, Purpura bought the “Savage” a subscription to The New Yorker. These men were starved for companionship, Purpura says of the bonds that formed.

He learned to embrace the evidence — a strategy to undermine the worst charges. OK, his client sold dope. But a killer? Never.

He put psychologists on the witness stand to explain the adolescent brain. He showed jurors a defendant’s childhood of poverty, abuse and neglect. The past shouldn’t excuse the crime, he believed, but should preclude a death sentence.

“He was relentless,” said John “Jack” Purcell, a retired assistant U.S. attorney who tried cases against Purpura. “It was like a boxing match: You hit him as hard as you can — he gets up.”

Many of his clients were imprisoned for life. But none was executed, not on his watch.

So when A. Eduardo Balarezo, a D.C. lawyer born in Ecuador, needed co-counsel in 2005 for his first capital murder trial, other attorneys suggested this Baltimore lawyer who had defended the indefensible.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, the Sinaloa smuggler was on the run.

He had muscled his way into Tijuana and provoked a cartel war. Captured, he had been sentenced to 20 years in a Mexican prison for drug trafficking. But he escaped, purportedly by bribing the guards and hiding in the laundry.

Now, he had a cadre of armed bodyguards, prosecutors say, a network of mountain hideaways and a diamond-studded pistol on his hip. He was rumored to be somewhere in the “Golden Triangle,” a remote region of marijuana farms and cartel poppy fields.

A Mexican national manhunt had entered a fifth year. The legend of El Chapo had emerged.

Back in D.C. federal court, Purpura and Balarezo tried their first case together.

They defended a gang foot soldier accused of murder and of peddling PCP around Washington. The drug charges stuck, but not the murder. Their client got 22 years.

Balarezo counted it a win. It was May 2006, and he had found a like mind in Purpura.

The next year, Balarezo won a rare acquittal for a Colombian accused of directing payments for an overseas cocaine syndicate. The lawyer’s name spread in the underworld.

The cases were tricky: shell companies, money laundering, foreign bank accounts. The evidence was enormous: kilos of cocaine packed into airplanes, shipping containers and speedboats that streaked toward U.S. shores. He turned to Purpura for help.

They fell into a routine: Purpura opening trial; Balarezo, a decade his junior, closing trial. Balarezo called his co-counsel the old man. Purpura brought him a peanut butter and jelly.

With other lawyers, Purpura flew to Bogota and Medellin to interview accused narco-traffickers. He came to believe his cartel cases — like those capital murder trials — were at the heart of the justice system.

He neither condones nor condemns his clients’ behavior; not his job. He defends their rights. These are men charged with the worst crimes, amid overwhelming evidence. They’re most vulnerable to a shoddy defense. The integrity of a justice system, like a society, he believes, rests in how it treats the vulnerable.

He and Balarezo defended Alfredo Beltran Leyva, the youngest of three Mexican brothers alleged to run a billion-dollar cocaine cartel. He was known as “The Desert Ant” and wore a tactical vest laden with grenades, prosecutors say. Beltran Leyva eventually would get life in prison.

But as his trial drew near, a stunning announcement came. Mexican marines had stormed a Sinaloa safe house and chased El Chapo Guzman into the sewers. He climbed out and stole a car at gunpoint — nearly making off, officials said. But police stopped the car and arrested him. They whisked him into hiding. His hit men were reportedly en route to rescue him.

Guzman was flown to the U.S. to stand trial. He landed on Long Island in January 2017.

A motorcade brought him to the Manhattan prison, a fortress built on bedrock. There would be no tunnels, officials promised. Guards led him to the isolated wing. They locked him in the solitary cell. One day, Balarezo’s phone rang. El Chapo wanted to meet Beltran Leyva’s lawyers.

Inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Purpura noticed the visitors’ log. Other lawyers had come seeking the case of the celebrity prisoner.

He and Balarezo passed through three locked doors. They climbed to the 10th floor, where mob bosses and terrorists have been held. They came to a small cell with a window of steel mesh. El Chapo greeted them.

Some lawyers make lofty promises of freedom, but not them. Purpura and Balarezo pledged to work hard and listen. They promised a tough defense no matter what the feds would bring.

Guzman hired them. He also hired Jeffrey Lichtman, a Manhattan attorney famous for defending the alleged Gambino crime family boss. The lawyers dug in.

The evidence traces 30 years. In court records, prosecutors revealed that they have cartel ledgers, bank accounts, travel logs, photos of stash houses and drug seizures. They also have at least 78 videos, 25,000 pages of witness statements and nearly 140,000 intercepted phone calls and text messages.

The defense costs could soar to $5 million, Purpura says.

Police have shut down the Brooklyn Bridge to shuttle Guzman to the courthouse. Crowds have taken photos of the motorcade. Gridlock is expected twice a day during the four-month trial. Meanwhile, Netflix filmed a crime drama based on El Chapo lore. Telemundo aired a fictional account of his life. Director Ridley Scott is shooting an adaptation for Hollywood.

But who is Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman really?

The son of a farmer, he’s believed to have had four wives — his current one a former beauty queen born in California — and more than a dozen children.

To prosecutors, he reigned over the Western Hemisphere’s cocaine supply from 1989 to 2014, moving nearly a half-million pounds into the U.S. He became staggeringly wealthy — making $14 billion, they say — and famously granted an interview to actor Sean Penn while in hiding. Forbes magazine ranked him among the world’s most rich and powerful. Mexicans extolled him as a modern-day Robin Hood.

Prosecutors say his assassins worked in a killing house with plastic sheets on the walls and drains in the floor to catch the blood.

To Purpura, Guzman is a man whose myth surpasses reality — a rabbit for authorities to chase. He’s intelligent despite a third-grade education, someone raised in a desolate village who hawked oranges as a boy and slept in a home with dirt floors. Mostly, he’s the product of generations before him who farmed marijuana and opium poppy to survive Mexico’s poor countryside. He enjoys his riches and fame.

“In his words, he was in the business,” Purpura says. “He got out a long, long time ago.”

Now he’s locked 23 hours a day in an 8-by-10-foot cell, his lawyers say. The one window has frosted glass; he can’t see out. A single light burns day and night; he can’t sleep. From the prison commissary, he bought a radio and bottled water. The guards took his clock without explanation.

Guzman has lost weight. He’s complained of vomiting, headaches and pain in his teeth. The stale air hurts his throat, he wrote a judge. He asked to see his wife, but prosecutors worry he will pass her coded messages.

“He’s desperate for human contact,” Purpura says.

Guzman’s men have turned on him and become government witnesses. He has few allies left.

On Wednesdays, the Baltimore lawyer and the prisoner pore over the case file. The two men don’t always seem so different to Purpura. In a way, they’re both grandfathers far from home at the end of a career. There’s too much work, too little time. Yet they share some small talk.

A bald Purpura admires Guzman’s thick, black hair. Guzman says he regrets he might not see his 95-year-old mother again. He asks what President Donald Trump has said.

Each visit brings the same small gesture: a greeting in the other’s language.

Purpura presses his palm to the steel mesh. “Mi hermano,” he says. My brother. El Chapo gives two thumbs up. “My friend,” he replies.