Sixty-one-year-old Mexican drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán has been found guilty of multiple drug-related offences and sentenced to life imprisonment at a New York federal court after an eleven-week trial.
Photograph: El Chapo, via Wikimedia Commons
El Chapo, the leader of a Mexican drug cartel, faced an extensive list of accusations including crimes such as exporting hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US, money laundering, and conspiring to manufacture and distribute heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana. He has also been suspected of ordering the murder, kidnapping, and torture of his rivals and is believed to have offered $100 million in bribes to the former Mexican President.
In 2001 he ran away from highly secured prison in Mexico and was not caught until 2014. He escaped in the following year. His getaway from a high-security prison was thoroughly planned and prepared with the involvement of his sons. They bought a property nearby to coordinate the building process of a mile-long tunnel through which El Chapo escaped on a specially designed motorcycle. In 2016 he was captured once again and later extradited to the US for his trial.
A mere two weeks following the February 12th verdict, an anonymous juror emailed Vice News reporter, Keegan Hamilton. In a video interview, it surfaced that five members of the jury had actively disobeyed Judge Cogan’s explicit instructions to refrain from following media coverage of the trial.
There is no doubt that given the number of articles published during the court case the jurors would be swayed, even subconsciously. One of the many articles that were read by these jurors was the series of rape cases regarding girls as young as 13. These cases were only deemed to be ‘allegations’ as they were too unreliable and prejudicial to be admitted to the trial. Nonetheless, they were taken into consideration by a disturbed jury.
Even if he is a convicted felon on numerous charges, he still has a right to a fair trial. After all, innocent until proven guilty. The right to a fair trial is not a trivial obligation but a fundamental civil right governed by the Sixth Amendment in the United States Constitution.
Purported misconduct that contaminates fair hearings occur in every country, every year. Many times is it rooted in a lack of resources and a bountiful presence of corruption within state bodies.
He faces life in prison, and officials say that most likely he will be taken to a federal supermax in Colorado. Although he was successful in escaping from prison before, this time he will not be able as no-one has ever escaped from the supermax, a place that a warden once described as ‘a clean version of hell.’
After his arrest, the Sinaloa cartel is headed by Ismael Zambada Garcia (also known as El Mayo) and Guzman's sons, Alfredo Guzman Salazar and Ivan Archivaldo Salazar.
Although the Sinaloa cartel can be run by other drug leaders, the imprisonment of El Chapo means the downfall of one of the world’s most notorious criminals. Nonetheless, the significance of this trial in the fight against drug cartels is questionable. Putting the Sinaloa Cartel at a more disadvantageous position might well result in empowering its biggest rival organisation – The Jalisco New Generation. The intended outcome of the trial therefore might be reversed, and contribute to the growth of the world’s biggest drug-dealing cartels. Only time will tell.
[1] http://fortune.com/2019/01/09/el-chapo-it-guy-fbi/
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/nyregion/el-chapo-trial.html
[3] https://www.coe.int/en/web/impact-convention-human-rights/-/failure-to-investigate-attack-on-roma-settlement-leads-to-local-reforms