The trial and conviction of the notorious Joaquín Guzmán Loera, also known as El Chapo, told us much about the man, the multi-billion drugs trade and the attempts to stop it.
Guzmán, the notorious Mexican drug-cartel leader, has a nervous tic.
He tugs at his right lapel. On difficult days in the courtroom, such as when his ex-mistress testified, he pulled at his jacket more than usual.
He stood trial in New York for drug trafficking charges after successfully evading US and Mexican authorities for years and escaping from prison in Mexico on two occasions.
Other times during the trial, he glanced around the room in a furtive manner. He is known for tunnelling his way to freedom, and people in the room said jokingly that he was looking for an escape route.
Shortly before the jury began their deliberations, Guzmán stopped searching for a way out. He listened intently to the judge. The man who had once overseen the Sinaloa cartel, an enterprise fuelled by cocaine, violence and terror, looked uneasy.
Now he has been found guilty of all 10 criminal counts related to drug trafficking. He faces life in prison, and officials say that most likely he will be taken to a federal supermax in Colorado.
Guzmán was legendary for the tunnels he used to transport drugs under the US-Mexico border as well as to flee prison and escape from authorities. But no-one has ever escaped from the supermax, a place that a warden once described as “a clean version of hell”. Chances are Guzmán will die there.
From a business perspective, he’d had a good run. He made $14bn (£11bn) over the course of his career, according to prosecutors.
He trafficked in cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs, explained a US assistant attorney, and he oversaw a network of dealers, kidnappers and “henchmen”, a team of assassins on his payroll.
Two years ago, Guzmán was extradited to the US. His three-month trial in a New York courtroom featured more than 50 government witnesses, including men and women who had pursued him for years as well as former cartel associates who decided to testify against him in the hope that they would receive lighter sentences.
The government’s first witness, Carlos Salazar, a retired customs agent, says he has seen up close the violence that Guzmán and his cartel members inflict on people.
Salazar had “butterflies” in his stomach when he walked into the courtroom and testified about a tunnel in Arizona that he had found, one that Guzmán used for hauling bricks of cocaine underneath the US-Mexico border.
Still, Salazar says: “I did make it a point to look in his direction. I made eye contact.”
Individuals such as Salazar and Brennan, who work or have worked in law enforcement but were not involved in the prosecution, still see the trial as vindication. “It’s rewarding to see that at the highest level of narcotics distribution, someone would be held accountable,” says New York City’s special narcotics prosecutor, Bridget Brennan. “There’s satisfaction in that.”
“He wreaked havoc in the US for many, many years,” says Michael McGowan, a former FBI undercover agent and the author of Ghost, a book that describes one of the bureau’s investigations of Guzmán. “It’s time to face the music.”
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