El Chapo Sentenced To Life In Prison

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán, once one of the most wanted men in the world, will spend the rest of his days behind bars after a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, sentenced him to life in prison on Wednesday. crimes of which he was found guilty last February.

Judge Brian M. Cogan communicated the penalty to the 62-year-old Sinaloa cartel chief in a room crammed with lawyers, prosecutors, federal agents, and journalists, as well as the narco's wife, Emma Coronel, who again went to court to show her support for her husband and in the past she already said that she would stay by his side no matter what happened.

The sentence imposed by Cogan, which includes 30 years in prison additional to life and the payment of compensation for all irregularities that led to the violation of his client's right to be tried by an impartial jury. Cogan denied the request.

El Chapo was found guilty by a jury last February of the 10 charges related to drug trafficking and money laundering against him in the trial that was held for months in Brooklyn federal court, in which a long Chapo's list of former collaborators, including an ex-lover, took the stand to testify against the accused.

Those testimonies exposed how Guzmán and other drug lords had managed to weave over the years a huge clandestine network that managed to transport hundreds of tons of cocaine and other drugs to the United States with the complicity of the Mexican authorities, a highly lucrative that made him one of the richest criminals on the planet.

An empire that Guzmán governed with an iron hand, without contemplation for whoever betrayed him with the authorities or with rival gangs, with which he waged a bloody war for control of the business that caused hundreds of deaths. One of his former partners even went so far as to detail how many murders he had commanded to commit and how much it cost him.

Brooklyn federal prosecutor Richard P. Donoghue, whose office prepared the case against Guzmán for years, called the sentence "well deserved."

"It means that Guzmán will never again spill poison on our borders, earning millions, while innocent lives are lost to violence and drug addiction," said the prosecutor, who added a warning to Chapo's heirs. "The same fate awaits whoever wants to take his place."