“He still has capability and resources while his kids run his business for him,
Now that a jury has welded Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera’s fate, so begins the tricky business of plotting which institution the convict will live out the rest of his days.
During the 3-month trial the 61-year-old Guzman, better known by the shorthand sobriquet “El Chapo” or Shorty, was feted to a last gasp of sparkling deference when various turncoat witnesses for the prosecution called the big 5-foot-6 stout man by the more regal “Don Joaquin.”
For decades Guzman boondoggled law enforcement as a real-life Robin Hood (notching a regular listing as a billionaire on the Forbes list) whose palm-greasing helped him always be one step ahead.
10. Joaquín « El Chapo » Guzmán: $1 billion Getty Images
“I was an agent back in the day and I heard of Chapo Guzman. He was like this myth,” Derek Maltz, former Special Operations head of the Drug Enforcement Agency who pursued the kingpin for years, said. “Every time we had a good lead, the guy would get away.”
Catching a white whale like Guzman equaled a Super Bowl win for Maltz and many tireless others who chased the antihero for decades. “For a guy doing this, it is as big as you can get to actually capture Chapo,” Maltz said of the kingpin’s second capture before he retired from the DEA back in 2014.
Part of the jubilation stemmed from bringing the man’s celestial nature (with the ability to disappear again and again) down to size.
The almost phantom-like drug lord of the Sinaloa Cartel, whom prosecutors tagged as “the most notorious drug trafficker in the world,” broke free from not one, but two maximum-security Mexican prisons in 2001 and 2015; until he was hunted down and captured on Jan. 8,2016, in a bloody gunbattle between his army of bodyguards and Mexican marines.
Maltz believes much of the credit for the collar of collars goes to the coordination of agencies (Homeland Security Investigations or HSI, Customs and Border Patrol or CPB, DEA, FBI, U. S. Marshals Service and Mexico’s military) who pounced on Guzman’s propensity for gourmet food and the married man’s affinity for women on the side.
“He had gourmet chefs that would make his meals,” Maltz said. “He loved his tequila and loved his women.
“Law enforcement is good at finding these vulnerabilities.”
Members of the US Marshals Service patrols outside the US Federal Courthouse while the trial for Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman take place on February 7,2019 in Brooklyn, New York. – A New York jury is deliberating the fate of Guzman after a three month drug trial that laid bare the loves, schemes and escapes of Mexico’s most famous drug lord. KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images
Last year the prisoner had his comeuppance when he lost his extradition fight and was flown to the States by federal agents. Since November, Guzman’s been whisked back-and-forth over the NYPD- manned Brooklyn Bridge to sit in the extra secure eighth-floor courtroom for months as Eastern District prosecutors pounded and stacked peaks of evidence and testimony in into juror’s craniums (a good portion translated into Spanish through interpreters) and held all the trial-of-the-century trappings.
When Guzman is sentenced after being found guilty on all of his 10-counts (most notably being found guilty of Continuing Criminal Enterprise–which carries a life term) he will be punching a ticket to some stateside fortress.
But which one?
The options floated could be as far-fetched as Guzman being sent to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station (where enemy combatants have been detained after getting plucked off battlefields in the U. S. war on terror). Other options could be Leavenworth in Kansas or even Lewisburg in Pennsylvania.
All imposing institutions.
But experts whom Newsweek spoke to prognosticate El Chapo Guzman’s final stop say it will likely be in ‘Supermax’ at United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility or ADX Florence, colloquially called the “Alcatraz in the Rockies.”
“They’re going to send him to the most securely severe facility they can,” said Dr. L. Thomas Kucharski, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Department of Psychology and formerly chief psychiatrist with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
He’s confident that the Chapo prison stakes starts and finishes with ADX Florence because it is “the top rung” and everywhere else “is below it.”
“I will bet you lunch that that’s where he’s headed,” Kucharski said. “I imagine they will spend all but two minutes before they decide to send him to the most securely, severe facility they can.”
The Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility, part of the Florence Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado. ADX houses offenders requiring the tightest controls. Steven Clevenger/Corbis via Getty Images
ADX Florence is that.
No doubt, deciding Guzman’s future address has been long in the works.
Loyola Marymount University Law School professor Laurie Levenson suspects that Bureau of Prisons personnel have been “preparing for this for a while.”
That means the logistics of dealing with one of the most infamous inmates in modern times is being mapped out now. The transportation, the pre-sentencing review of the degree of danger Guzman poses all are being calculated in advance.
“I don’t think they are waiting until sentencing,” she said.
Bureau of Prison officials responded to Newsweek’s requests (prior to the guilty verdict) to better understand how Guzman’s future residence would be chosen and how a high-power inmate like Guzman will be handled once he is in the system.
« He will be treated as any other offender who is sentenced to a term of imprisonment, » the BOP statement reads. « If convicted, the [U. S. Marshals Service] will request designation and forward all his documentation to the [Designation and Sentence Computation Center]. He will be classified and his sentence computation will be completed. Based on his classification, he will be placed in a Bureau facility commensurate with his security and program needs. »
Before dropping from Supermax status to medium security a decade ago, U. S. Penitentiary, Marion in Illinois (built to replace Alcatraz) housed many boldfaced convicts such as Major League Baseball player Pete Rose, Philadelphia mafioso Nicodemo Domenic « Little Nicky » Scarfo, and Gambino Crime family boss « The Dapper Don » John Gotti among others.
