Mexican President Calls El Chapo’s Life Sentence ‘Inhumane’ As The Drug Lord Will Die In America’s Roughest Prison

ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images


By now, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is settled into Colorado’s ADX Florence, the country’s only supermax prison, commonly known as “the Alcatraz of the Rockies.” Barring Chapo channeling his inner Andy Durfresne (again), the 62-year-old Mexican drug lord will die there.

This week, a judge sentenced Chapo to life in prison plus 30 years after a jury found him guilty in February after an 11-week trial.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said at his habitual morning conferences that sentences like the one for El Chapo — “a sentence for life in a hostile jail, hard, inhumane” — made life no longer worth pursuing.

Ahead of his sentencing this week, El Chapo echoed the Mexican President’s sentiments, claiming his time in American prison was “physical, emotional and mental torture” and “the most inhumane situation” he had ever experienced in his “entire life.” Florence, which is home to gems like the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, and Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, allows inmates a television but only a 4-inch window to the outside world.

To add insult to injury, the drug kingpin will never get to see his beauty queen wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, in the flesh. The prison allows visitation, but have placed extreme precautionary measures on the 5’4” man who escaped prison twice.

“They’re going to keep them separated forever,” Guzman’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman said. “He’ll never get to see her again.”

His daughters don’t get any special treatment either.

“No contact visits are allowed, even with his daughters,” Lichtman said, “if he’s allowed to see them at all. It’s kind of gruesome.”

According to the New York Post, López Obrador told reporters that that he hoped Guzman’s sentence would lead to less violence in Mexico.

“We think that bit by bit the number of criminal incidents will decline,” he said. “We will continue to create a better society, supported by values, that is not based on accumulating material wealth, money or luxury.”

For what it’s worth, my buddy got robbed by the staff at a bar in Mexico City while we were on a bachelor party last year. Fucking El Chapo.

[h/t New York Post]

 

 

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Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.