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

Before and after his arrest last week on drug trafficking and murder charges, U.S. authorities called Ryan Wedding “a modern-day El Chapo.”

Prosecutors are actually hoping Wedding finally ends up with the identical fate because the notorious Mexican drug lord: spending the remainder 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 a whole bunch 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 many years before he was captured in 2016 and dropped at the U.S. to face justice.

In 2019, after a three-month trial and 6 days of deliberations, a Latest York jury found Guzman guilty of all 10 criminal counts against him — a lot of which overlap with the fees Wedding faces.

While the 2 cases are different in scope, with Guzman accused of operating a much larger organization over an extended time period, they share many similarities, said Richard Donoghue, who served because the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Latest York during Guzman’s trial.

“We’re talking about large-scale narcotics trafficking, violence, and the form of continuing criminal enterprise activity that was charged within the El Chapo case and is charged within 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 possible witness. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The U.S. Department of Justice wouldn’t comment when asked if it could seek the death penalty.

On the time of Guzman’s arrest, U.S. authorities said that they had gathered an “avalanche” of evidence for the reason that late Eighties 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 goal in dozens of federal investigations before he was finally captured.

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

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

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

Essentially the most complex charge against each Guzman and Wedding, operating a unbroken criminal enterprise, requires prosecutors to prove a series of violations were committed with a view to further the enterprise.

The statute is comparable to federal and state racketeering laws.

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Within the Guzman trial, jurors had to think about 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 which 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, they usually keep records, they keep spreadsheets, they keep records of shipments which are made and aircraft and sea vehicles which are used. They keep shipments of debts and credits.

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

Much more compelling in such a trial, he added, shall 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 relations discussing cartel business.

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

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

One other critical piece of the prosecution’s case shall be testimony and evidence provided by co-operating witnesses involved within the criminal organization.

That features 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 a number of the most compelling and vibrant testimony of the trial.

Amongst their revelations were details in regards to 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 autumn for the federal government witnesses and urged the jury to not consider individuals who “lie, steal, cheat, deal drugs and kill people.”

Donoghue said this is the reason it’s essential for prosecutors to back up that witness testimony with solid evidence.

“What you ought to tell the jury at the tip of the day is that it is best to not consider these co-operating witnesses because they’re good people, because they usually are not,” he said. “You must trust their testimonies since it’s corroborated by independent evidence within the case, and so you really want to be sure that you just’ve done your legwork.

“By their very nature, co-operating witnesses are defendants who’ve pleaded guilty and who’ve lots at stake. And that would at all times be a pitfall for a prosecutor.”

So far, 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 each the trial and potential witnesses.

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

“Irrespective of how much you’ve met with them or prepared them, regardless of how much they’ve at stake, you don’t really know what they’re going to say until they’re on the stand,” he said.

“In order that is at all times a priority, but what you ought to do in that situation is every thing you can to persuade that co-operating witness that they shall be protected, that their relations shall be protected, no matter how they testify.”

Guzman’s trial was held under extraordinary security measures as a consequence of each 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 decision “a victory for the American individuals who suffered a lot.”

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

The brothers, known in Mexico because the “Chapitos” or “little Chapos,” individually pleaded guilty last 12 months 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 marketplace for cocaine and other drugs.

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

“Every shipment that you just intercept, and every body 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 price having.”

— with files from The Associated Press