How the Ryan Wedding drug trial could compare to ‘El Chapo’ court case

Prosecutors are now hoping Wedding ends up with the same fate as the notorious Mexican drug lord: spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Wedding, the Canadian Olympic snowboarder-turned-alleged drug kingpin, pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges accusing him of overseeing a billion-dollar transnational criminal enterprise that smuggled hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. and Canada.

Authorities say Wedding worked with, and received protection from, the Sinaloa Cartel, which Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman led for decades before he was captured in 2016 and brought to the U.S. to face justice.

In 2019, after a three-month trial and six days of deliberations, a New York jury found Guzman guilty of all 10 criminal counts against him — many of which overlap with the charges Wedding faces.

While the two cases are different in scope, with Guzman accused of operating a much larger organization over a longer period of time, they share many similarities, said Richard Donoghue, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York during Guzman’s trial.

“We’re talking about large-scale narcotics trafficking, violence, and the type of continuing criminal enterprise activity that was charged in the El Chapo case and is charged in the Ryan Wedding case,” he said in an interview.

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Wedding faces 17 felony counts, including running a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to distribute and export cocaine, witness intimidation and conspiring to murder a potential witness. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The U.S. Department of Justice would not comment when asked if it would seek the death penalty.

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At the time of Guzman’s arrest, U.S. authorities said they had gathered an “avalanche” of evidence since the late 1980s that showed that Guzman and his Sinaloa Cartel associates had made billions of dollars by smuggling tons of cocaine, heroin, meth and marijuana into the U.S.

Guzman faced six separate U.S. indictments and was a target in dozens of federal investigations before he was finally captured.

“The amount of evidence that was assembled against El Chapo was really staggering,” Donoghue told Global News.

“The number of co-operators, the number of law enforcement officers who could testify to intercepted shipments, the amount of communications that we had — a key part of that investigation was breaking into his communication system, because then you could see real contemporaneous actions on the part of the defendant that we could tie to him.

“So part of the challenge [in presenting the case to the jury] was scaling it down.”

The most complex charge against both Guzman and Wedding, operating a continuing criminal enterprise, requires prosecutors to prove a series of violations were committed in order to further the enterprise.

The statute is similar to federal and state racketeering laws.

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In the Guzman trial, jurors had to consider 27 different predicate offences under that one charge, ultimately finding him guilty of 25 of the offences.

Donoghue said evidence presented in a large-scale drug trafficking prosecution will include records of the alleged criminal enterprise that are obtained by investigators.

“The Sinaloa Cartel, as with many [cartels], it’s a business,” he said. “It’s a multinational business, a multibillion-dollar business, and they keep records, they keep spreadsheets, they keep records of shipments that are made and aircraft and sea vehicles that are used. They keep shipments of debts and credits.

“Very often you’ll find, in cases like this, something that looks almost like the books of a Fortune 500 company, but it’s about narcotics dealing.”

Even more compelling in such a trial, he added, will be any personal communications showing the direct involvement of the accused.

In Guzman’s trial, the court heard intercepted recordings of his phone conversations with distributors, lieutenants and family members discussing cartel business.

Donoghue said proving the drug trafficking conspiracy charges required prosecutors to show evidence of actual narcotics shipments that were intercepted and tied back to Guzman and his associates.

That will also apply to the allegations that Wedding conspired and facilitated the murder of witnesses and rivals, he said.

Another critical piece of the prosecution’s case will be testimony and evidence provided by co-operating witnesses involved in the criminal organization.

That includes communications, location data and surveillance showing their involvement, Donoghue said.

Guzman’s trial heard from 56 prosecution witnesses, over a dozen of whom were close associates who agreed to testify against their former boss.

Those figures provided some of the most compelling and colourful testimony of the trial.

Among their revelations were details about the Sinaloa Cartel’s inner operations and Guzman’s own involvement in torturing and killing rivals and perceived traitors — including ordering one man to be buried alive.

The defence argued that Guzman was being forced to take the fall for the government witnesses and urged the jury not to believe people who “lie, steal, cheat, deal drugs and kill people.”

Donoghue said this is why it’s important for prosecutors to back up that witness testimony with solid evidence.

“What you want to tell the jury at the end of the day is that you should not believe these co-operating witnesses because they’re good people, because they are not,” he said. “You should trust their testimonies because it’s corroborated by independent evidence in the case, and so you really need to make sure that you’ve done your legwork.

“By their very nature, co-operating witnesses are defendants who have pleaded guilty and who have a lot at stake. And that could always be a pitfall for a prosecutor.”

To date, 36 alleged associates of Wedding have been arrested by U.S. and Canadian authorities, including his lawyer accused of advising the alleged witness killing and Wedding’s top lieutenant.

Some alleged co-conspirators remain at large, which could present security risks for both the trial and potential witnesses.

Convincing people to co-operate or turn themselves in is one of the biggest challenges prosecutors face right up until trial, Donoghue said.

“No matter how much you’ve met with them or prepared them, no matter how much they have at stake, you don’t really know what they’re going to say until they’re on the stand,” he said.

“So that is always a concern, but what you want to do in that situation is everything that you can to convince that co-operating witness that they will be safe, that their family members will be safe, regardless of how they testify.”

Guzman’s trial was held under extraordinary security measures due to both his history of intimidating and ordering the murder of witnesses and two successful escapes from Mexican maximum security prisons. At one point, the judge overseeing the trial denied a motion by Guzman asking to hug his wife.

The jurors were kept anonymous and escorted to and from the courthouse by armed U.S. Marshals. Guzman himself was also given a heavy security detail and kept in solitary confinement when not in court.

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After Guzman was found guilty in February 2019, Donoghue called the verdict “a victory for the American people who suffered so much.”

The Sinaloa Cartel has continued on, however, later turning to fentanyl as its main export under the leadership of Guzman’s sons Joaquin Guzman Lopez and Ovidio Guzman Lopez.

The brothers, known in Mexico as the “Chapitos” or “little Chapos,” separately pleaded guilty last year to U.S. drug trafficking charges in exchange for reduced prison sentences.

Wedding is accused of helping further the cartel’s operations into Canada, which Guzman himself had identified as a key market for cocaine and other drugs.

Donoghue said taking on drug trafficking organizations will continue to be challenging, but is hopeful that convictions and heavy prison sentences will act as a deterrent.

“Every shipment that you intercept, and every person you deter from getting involved in a shipment or the business generally, is a life that hopefully you’ve saved down the road,” he said. “So it’s a fight well worth having.”

— with files from The Associated Press