Crime lord El Chapo guilty on 10 counts

Verdict for Mexican kingpin follows three-month NYC trial; lawyers vow appeal

NEW YORK — The Mexican crime lord known as El Chapo was convicted Tuesday after a three-month drug trial in New York City that exposed the inner workings of his sprawling cartel, which over decades shipped tons of drugs into the United States and plagued Mexico with bloodshed and corruption.

The guilty verdict against the kingpin, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman, ended the career of a legendary outlaw who also served as a dark folk hero in Mexico, notorious for his innovative smuggling tactics, his violence against competitors, his storied prison breaks and his ability to evade the Mexican authorities.

As U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan read the jury’s charge sheet in open court — guilty verdicts on all 10 counts of the indictment — Guzman sat listening to a translator, looking stunned. When the reading of the verdict was complete, Guzman leaned back to glance at his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, who flashed him a thumbs up with tears in her eyes.

The jury’s decision came more than a week after the panel started deliberations at the trial in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn where prosecutors presented a mountain of evidence against the cartel leader, including testimony from 56 witnesses, 14 of whom once worked with Guzman. Guzman now faces

life in prison at his sentencing hearing, scheduled for June 25.

Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, Richard Donoghue, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, called the guilty verdict a victory for law enforcement, for Mexico — where 100,000 people had died because of drug violence — and for families who had lost someone to the “black hole of addiction.”

“There are those who say the war on drugs is not worth fighting,” Donoghue added. “Those people are wrong.”

In their own news conference, Guzman’s lawyers promised an appeal, saying they would focus on the extradition process that took the kingpin to New York City for trial and on the prosecution’s efforts to restrict their cross-examinations of witnesses. They said Guzman had expected the guilty verdict and was prepared for it.

“I’ve never faced a case with so many cooperating witnesses and so much evidence,” Jeffrey Lichtman, one of Guzman’s attorneys, said. “We did all we could as defense lawyers.”

Lichtman said the defense “fought like complete savages” and will appeal the case. “No matter who the defendant is, you still have to fight to the death.”

He said his client is a positive thinker who “doesn’t give up.”

Upon hearing the verdict, Guzman was “as cool as a cucumber,” Lichtman added. “Honest to God, we were more upset than he was.”

A. Eduardo Balarezo, another one of Guzman’s attorneys, added about his client: “When he came here he was already presumed guilty by everyone, unfortunately. We weren’t just fighting evidence,

we were fighting perception.”

Not long after the jury got the case Feb. 4, Matthew Whitaker, the acting U.S. attorney general, stepped into the courtroom and shook hands with each of the trial prosecutors, wishing them good luck. Over the next several days, the jurors, appearing to scrutinize the government’s evidence, asked to be given thousands of pages of testimony, including — in an unusual move — the full testimonies of six different prosecution witnesses.

Cogan lauded the jury’s meticulous attention to detail and the “remarkable” approach it took toward deliberations. Cogan said it made him “very proud to be an American.”

TIGHT SECURITY

Guzman’s trial, which took place under intense media scrutiny and tight security from bomb-sniffing dogs, police snipers and federal marshals with radiation sensors, was the first time an American jury heard details about the financing, logistics and bloody history of one of the drug cartels that have long pumped heroin, cocaine, marijuana and synthetic drugs like fentanyl into the United States, earning traffickers billions of dollars.

But despite extensive testimony about private jets filled with cash, bodies burned in bonfires, and evidence that Guzman and his men often drugged and raped young girls, the case also revealed the operatic nature of cartel culture. It featured accounts of traffickers taking target practice with a bazooka, a mariachi playing all night outside a jail cell and a murder plot involving a cyanide-laced arepa.

Although Monday’s conviction dealt a blow to the Sinaloa drug cartel, which Guzman, 61, helped to run for decades, the group continues to operate, led in part by the kingpin’s sons. In 2016 and 2017, the years when Guzman was arrested

for a final time and sent for prosecution to New York, Mexican heroin production increased by 37 percent and fentanyl seizures at the southwest border more than doubled, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The DEA, in its most recent assessment of the drug trade, noted that Guzman’s organization and a rising power, the Jalisco New Generation cartel, “remain the greatest criminal drug threat” to the United States.

The top charge of the New York City indictment named Guzman as a principal leader of a “continuing criminal enterprise” to purchase drugs from suppliers in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Mexico’s Golden Triangle — an area including the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua where most of the country’s heroin and marijuana are produced.

It also accused him of earning $14 billion during his career by smuggling up to 200 tons of drugs across the U.S. border in an array of yachts, speedboats, long-range fishing boats, airplanes, cargo trains, semi-submersible submarines, tractor-trailers filled with frozen meat and cans of jalapenos, and a tunnel hidden under a pool table in Agua Prieta, Mexico.

The prosecution was years in the making, and Guzman’s trial drew upon investigative work by the FBI, the DEA, the U.S. Coast Guard, Homeland Security Investigations and federal prosecutors in Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Washington, New York and El Paso, Texas. The trial team also relied on scores of local American police officers and authorities in Ecuador, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.

The evidence presented at the trial included dozens of surveillance photos, three sets of detailed drug ledgers, several of the defendant’s handwritten

letters, and hundreds of his phone calls and text messages intercepted through four separate wiretap operations.

Prosecutors used all of this to trace Guzman’s 30-year rise from a young, ambitious trafficker with a knack for speedy smuggling to a billionaire narco lord with an entourage of maids and secretaries, a portfolio of vacation homes — even a ranch with a personal zoo.

Andrea Goldbarg, an assistant U.S. attorney, called the prosecution’s case “an avalanche” during the government’s summations. Even with the help of a Power Point presentation, complete with a slideshow of photos of the kingpin, Goldbarg took almost an entire day to lead the jury through it.

Confronting this onslaught, Guzman’s lawyers offered little in the way of an affirmative defense, opting instead to use cross-examination to attack the credibility of the witnesses.

The defense case lasted just half an hour. Guzman’s lawyers did not deny his crimes as much as argue that he was a fall guy for government witnesses who were more evil than he was.

In closing arguments, Lichtman urged the jury not to believe government witnesses who “lie, steal, cheat, deal drugs and kill people.”

Witness after witness took the stand at the trial and talked about paying off nearly every level of the Mexican police, military and political establishment — including the shocking allegation that Guzman gave a $100 million bribe to the country’s former president, Enrique Pena Nieto, in the run-up to Mexico’s 2012 elections. There was also testimony that bribes were paid to Genaro Garcia Luna, one of Mexico’s top former law enforcement officers, a host of Mexican generals and police officials, and almost the entire congress of Colombia.