NEW YORK -- The Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been
sentenced to life behind bars in a U.S. prison, a humbling end for a
drug lord once notorious for his ability to kill, bribe or tunnel his
way out of trouble.
A federal judge in Brooklyn handed down the
sentence Wednesday, five months after Guzman's conviction in an epic
drug-trafficking case.
The
62-year-old drug lord, who had been protected in Mexico by an army of
gangsters and an elaborate corruption operation, was brought to the U.S.
to stand trial after he twice escaped from Mexican prisons.
Before
he was sentenced, Guzman, complained about the conditions of his
confinement and told the judge he was denied a fair trial. He said U.S.
District Judge Brian Cogan failed to thoroughly investigate claims of
juror misconduct.
"My case was stained and you denied me a fair
trial when the whole world was watching," Guzman said in court through
an interpreter. "When I was extradited to the United States, I expected
to have a fair trial, but what happened was exactly the opposite."
The
harsh sentence was pre-ordained. The guilty verdict in February at
Guzman's 11-week trial triggered a mandatory sentence of life without
parole .
The evidence showed that under Guzman's orders, the
Sinaloa cartel was responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and
other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors
said in court papers re-capping the trial. They also said his "army of
sicarios" was under orders to kidnap, torture and murder anyone who got
in his way.
The defense argued he was framed by other traffickers
who became government witnesses so they could get breaks in their own
cases.
Guzman
has been largely cut off from the outside world since his extradition
in 2017 and his remarks in the courtroom Wednesday could be the last
time the public hears from him. Guzman thanked his family for giving him
"the strength to bare this torture that I have been under for the past
30 months."
Wary of his history of escaping from Mexican prisons,
U.S. authorities have kept him in solitary confinement in an
ultra-secure unit at a Manhattan jail and under close guard at his
appearances at the Brooklyn courthouse where his case unfolded.
Experts
say he will likely wind up at the federal government's "Supermax"
prison in Florence, Colorado, known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies."
Most inmates at Supermax are given a television, but their only actual
view of the outside world is a 4-inch window. They have minimal
interaction with other people and eat all their meals in their cells.
While
the trial was dominated by Guzman's persona as a near-mythical outlaw
who carried a diamond-encrusted handgun and stayed one step ahead of the
law, the jury never heard from Guzman himself, except when he told the
judge he wouldn't testify.
But evidence at Guzman's trial
suggested his decision to stay quiet at the defense table was against
his nature: Cooperating witnesses told jurors he was a fan of his own
rags-to-riches narco story, always eager to find an author or
screenwriter to tell it. He famously gave an interview to American actor
Sean Penn while he was a fugitive, hiding in the mountains after
accomplices built a long tunnel to help him escape from a Mexican
prison.
There
also were reports Guzman was itching to testify in his own defense
until his attorneys talked him out of it, making his sentencing a last
chance to seize the spotlight.
At the trial, Guzman's lawyers
argued that he was the fall guy for other kingpins who were better at
paying off top Mexican politicians and law enforcement officials to
protect them while the U.S. government looked the other way.
Prosecution
descriptions of an empire that paid for private planes, beachfront
villas and a private zoo were a fallacy, his lawyers say. And the
chances the U.S. government could collect on a roughly $12.5 billion
forfeiture order are zero, they add.
The government's case, defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said recently, was "all part of a show trial."
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