El Chapo: Jurors of alleged drug lord’s trial fear for their lives
Juan “El Chapo” Guzman Loera’s appetite for revenge has been folklore for decades, with jurors selected for the alleged drug kingpin’s trial fearing for their lives despite attempts to protect their identity.
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The first juror to go showed early signs her health could not cope with the pressure of casting judgment on the world’s most infamous drug lord.
When the Brooklyn woman was last week picked to serve at the trial of Juan “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, she burst into tears and left court sobbing.
This initial emotional reaction wasn’t enough to immediately disqualify her from jury selection. As Guzman’s defence lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman observed: “My concern is that if one gets off with a few tears, we’re going to have a trail of tears.”
DRUG EMPIRE: Business of accused drug lord El Chapo alive and well
But such was her fear of possible reprisal from the deadly Sinaloa cartel, the woman - whose identity is protected, like that of all 12 jurors - returned on day one of the trial-proper this week with a doctor’s note citing anxiety and was recused.
It didn’t help, the court heard, that colleagues at the media company where she worked had guessed she might be one of 100 New York residents short-listed to serve at what has been described as one of the city’s biggest criminal reckonings, with security reminiscent of that accorded to the trials of the first World Trade Centre bombers in the 1990s and old-school mob bosses such as John Gotti.
And it wasn’t enough, some worried jurors had argued, that the pre-trial guarantee sought by Judge Brian Cogan of El Chapo, 61, that he wouldn’t kill any jurors, had been offered.
After all, such was their terror at being called, one admitted to having googled the terms “El Chapo kill juror”.
El Chapo’s appetite for revenge has for decades been folklore in the north western Mexico state where US officials allege he amassed almost AUD$20 billion smuggling “tonne-upon-tonne” of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine to America, Europe, throughout Asia and Australia.
Notorious for employing “sicarios” or hitmen to take out government witnesses or anyone who threatened his business, and for escaping twice from high security prisons in Mexico, Guzman allegedly used his private army to target even his own family members when they emerged as rivals.
The second juror to pull out was a man who simply couldn’t afford to miss work for the projected four month trial, and he was replaced ahead of opening statements.
US authorities believe that as head of the Sinaloa cartel, so named because control of most of the state has been ceded by Mexican authorities to criminal enterprise, Guzman is responsible for ordering thousands of deaths and that he directly killed dozens, often with his favourite weapons, a diamond-encrusted pistol or gold-plated AK-47.
They are relying on a tranche of text messages and emails sent by the diminutive Guzman, whose nickname is “Shorty” in Spanish, to prove his role as drug kingpin, including fraud and conspiracy charges over 30 murders. Prosecutors are also calling several former cartel members who have turned state’s witness.
One of these, Jesus Zambada, on Wednesday spent three hours detailing the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel, identifying El Chapo as its former leader in court and describing the complicated pathways for illicit drugs from South America to the rest of the world.
Zambada, a 57-year-old former accountant who has been in custody since 2008, explained how most of the cartel’s cocaine was produced in Colombia and smuggled by speedboat across the Caribbean to the Mexican tourist beaches of Cancun. Here it was moved by couriers in cars and trucks such as oil tankers, to warehouses in Mexico City, and then moved through border towns through Texas, Arizona and New Mexico into mainland USA, becoming more valuable as it moved north.
Zambada said one kilogram of cocaine purchased in Colombia (all figures in AUD) for $4120 would sell for $27,500 in Los Angeles, $34,400 in Chicago and almost $50,000 in New York.
“The city of New York is the most difficult to sell it in because the police are very active,” he said.
(Australian drug users pay $309.94 a gram, the second highest amount for cocaine in the world, according to the Global Drug Survey 2018, just after New Zealand at $336.14 per gram. These huge mark-ups are one of the reasons cartels, including the Sinaloa, have increasingly targeted the Australian market.)
Guzman’s defence has argued that El Chapo is being framed, describing him as someone who courted fame and even Hollywood interest from the likes of actor Sean Penn, who interviewed him while he was on the run.
In that 2015 Rolling Stone interview, Guzman boasted: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world.”
But his lawyer Mr Lichtman said yesterday: “Mr Guzman is someone who, for better or for worse, enjoyed the notoriety of being ‘El Chapo’,” adding that “if he admitted he was broke”, he would not have been able to make the book and movie deal be was pursuing.
They say Zambada’s brother Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, is the true boss of the Sinaloa cartel and that the prosecution witnesses are lying.
“They’re here because they want to get out of jail by any means necessary,” said Mr Lichtman in his opening statement.
The trial, which has been costed at $65 million, is set to continue for four months.
This reporter is on twitter: @sarahblakemedia
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