Drug cartel kingpin ‘El Chapo’ sentenced to life in prison
NEW YORK — He was one of the most notorious outlaws of the past 100 years: a brutal Mexican cartel leader, a wily trafficker who smuggled more than $12 billion worth of drugs and plunged his country into a long-running tragedy of bloodshed and corruption.
But Wednesday morning, the 30-year criminal career of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known to the world as “El Chapo,” reached its final chapter as a federal judge in New York City sentenced him to life in prison.
The life term, mandated by law as a result of the severity of Guzmán’s crimes, was handed down in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, where the kingpin was convicted last winter of drug, murder and money laundering charges after a sprawling three-month trial.
As some of the federal agents who had chased him for years looked on from the gallery, Judge Brian M. Cogan issued the sentence and Guzmán, 62, was hauled away to prepare himself — pending an appeal — for spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Before he disappeared into a holding cell behind the courtroom, he blew a kiss to his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, who attended most of his trial and was implicated in a handful of his crimes.
Although Cogan had no choice but to sentence Guzmán to life, he noted that the “overwhelming evil” of the drug lord’s crimes was readily apparent. Beyond the life sentence — plus an additional 30 years — he ordered him to pay a staggering $12.6 billion in forfeiture.
Guzmán will likely be sent to the country’s most forbidding federal prison, the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, or ADX, in Florence, Colo.
Guzmán’s decadeslong career atop the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal mafias, came to a close only after years of joint investigation and pursuit by U.S. and Mexican authorities.
His ability to persistently evade capture — and then escape from prison after he was caught — underscored the deep corruption of the Mexican government by his cartel, which used bribery and intimidation to control not just the local, state and federal police, but some of the highest-ranking officials in the national government.
“It’s justice not only for the Mexican government, but for all of Guzmán’s victims in Mexico,” said Raymond P. Donovan, the agent in charge of the New York office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who was instrumental in capturing the kingpin twice.
One of Guzmán’s lawyers, Jeffrey Lichtman, spoke outside the courthouse, complaining, as his client had, the lengthy legal proceeding had been unfair.
“All he wanted was justice and at the end of the day, he didn’t get it,” Lichtman said. “It was a show trial, and it’s been so since Day 1.”
Moments later, Richard P. Donoghue, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, whose office prosecuted the case, also addressed reporters.
Donoghue said authorities could not undo the misery Guzmán had caused, “but we can ensure that he spends every minute of every day of the rest of his life in prison.”