Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, declared by the U.S. government to be "the most ruthless, dangerous, and feared man on the planet," has been found guilty of drug-trafficking offenses and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
After a three-month trial featuring testimony from more than 50 prosecution witnesses, including former associates of Guzman, and a swift six-day deliberation, the jury delivered a verdict that the judge praised as "quite remarkable," further lauding their understanding of and attention to detail in the case that made him “proud to be an American.”
A telenovela miniseries certainly must be in the works.
Dressed in a conservative gray suit, Guzman stared deadpan at the jury as he was informed of his fate. The only emotion shown by the former head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel was a kiss blown to his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, as he was led from the courtroom.
One bogeyman down, too many to follow.
An Intense Trial
The prosecution's dream team, made up of attorneys from Brooklyn, Miami, and Washington, came to court prepared to win on evidence amassed since the early 1980s. Weaving a story filled with murder, drugs, love, and luxury, prosecutors presented videos, photos, drug ledgers, and personal phone calls and text messages from Guzman to his wife.
In one message, Guzman and his wife, who called each other "mommy" and "daddy," spoke of how her enchiladas captured his heart. In the next message, their focus shifted to hiding weapons from authorities and plans to give their young daughter an AK-47.
Jurors also heard from a former mistress who escaped with El Chapo through a trapdoor tunnel under the bathtub, evading authorities for hours, all while completely naked.
A telenovela miniseries certainly must be in the works.
But the court also listened to hours of testimony about trafficking -- from tunnels and railways to submarines, cars, cargo and produce vans, and any other way one could creatively and invisibly transport drugs into the United States.
Prosecutors delivered one shocking fact after another, rattling the courtroom at times with the extent of the cartel's successful invasion of America with their deadly poison. One attorney silenced the jury when he demonstrated that Guzman had trafficked in more than 328 million lines of cocaine — enough to provide every man, woman, and child in the United States more than one line apiece.
But in the end, Guzman's own words and provable actions convicted the man. He is an excessively paranoid person -- given his profession understandably so -- and he installed spyware, listening devices, and GPS trackers on his associates’ cell phones. But he also spied on his wife and his mistresses, and the FBI managed to flip El Chapo's IT guy into ratting out the kingpin. The trove of gathered information put the silver bullet in Guzman's heart.
The Bigger They Are
The rise and fall of El Chapo will not soon fade from the attention of America; his life and reign of terror are featured on the popular Netflix show Narcos: Mexico. And obviously, the producers have hit the jackpot of intelligence and details on the most personal aspects of their main character, as the trial was a true-life show-and-tell of weapons, drugs, and murder.
After the drama of the trial subsides, and Guzman finally faces sentencing, it is presumed he will reside in the supermax prison near Florence, CO. At the ripe old age of 61, El Chapo would have to channel Harry Houdini to escape the confines of his future eight-by-eight cell. But let's not deprive a man of his human rights -- he will have company. The supermax also is home to Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef, and assorted other horrible people convicted of heinous crimes.
There is only one place better for Guzman, but he isn't dead yet, so Florence will have to do for now.
