‘El Chapo’ found guilty after epic drugs trial
NEW YORK — They got Shorty.
A jury of eight women and four men reached a unanimous verdict in Brooklyn Federal Court Tuesday, convicting Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera in the closely watched case.
The anonymous jury spent six days debating charges Guzman trafficked more than 150 tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the U.S. while generating “billions of dollars in profit” and conspiring to commit murder.
Guzman, whose narco nickname means “Shorty,” was up against a landslide of evidence painstakingly pieced together from sprawling investigations and indictments in New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois and California.
The jurors — their names a tightly guarded secret due to concerns about their safety — heard from 57 witnesses during 36 days of testimony that started back on Nov. 13.
Fourteen of the witnesses were former Guzman underlings and associates who flipped on the crime lord under cooperation agreements with the government.
The sometimes circuslike trial drifted into telenovela territory when Guzman and his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, wore matching burgundy velvet smoking jackets as a former mistress resumed testimony about the 2014 night she and a naked Guzman fled authorities through a secret tunnel under a pop-up bathtub.
Once the most wanted man in the world, Guzman, 61, declined to testify in his own defense.
His lawyers spent less than half an hour questioning one witness before resting their case Jan. 29.
In his closing argument, defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman claimed Guzman was never a true powerbroker in the Sinaloa Cartel — rather he was set up to become the ultimate fall guy for his fugitive former partner Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
In the government’s closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Goldbarg urged jurors to use their common sense and not let Guzman escape justice.
She reminded them of the drug lord’s two prior escapes from high-security Mexican prisons — hidden in a laundry cart in 2001 and through a nearly mile-long tunnel dug from a nearby property to the bottom of his prison cell shower in 2015.
She recalled how the cartel boss moved massive amounts of drugs up to the U.S. border and beyond with a dizzying array of airplanes, speedboats, semi-submersible submarines, tanker trains partially filled with vegetable oil, smuggling tunnels and jalapeno pepper cans stuffed with cocaine.
Goldbarg claimed Guzman’s enterprise earned more than a billion dollars in the early 1990s alone, trafficking more than 75 tons of cocaine into the U.S. using the pepper can ruse.
She said Guzman became so fabulously wealthy, he kept a private zoo with lions and tigers that he toured while riding on a personal train.
While the notorious narco’s empire evolved over the years as turf wars broke out and he lived life on the lam as a jailbreak fugitive, the drugs kept flowing, Goldbarg said.
She highlighted the countless bricks of cocaine seized up through 2014, his arsenal of military-grade weapons, his stable of sicarios, or hit men, and testimony Guzman paid millions in bribes to a rotating cast of corrupt officials.
The prosecutor opened her final argument with witness testimony claiming Guzman personally tortured and killed at least three people, ordering his men to burn two of the bodies in a bonfire and bury the third victim while still alive.
She said the jury didn’t have to conclude Guzman was the supreme leader of the Sinaloa Cartel — rather a top boss whose actions proved his status.
“Who traveled in an armored car with security guards? Who has not one but two tunnels (leading) to the United States? Who has a milelong tunnel built under the shower in his prison cell? Who has a zoo with little trains? Who flies around in jets and helicopters? Who has diamond-encrusted pistols? Who lives in the mountaintops and has his food flown to him?” Goldbarg fired off in rapid succession during her closing argument Jan. 30.
“The answer is common sense: A boss of the Sinaloa Cartel does this,” she said.