How the Ryan Wedding drug trial could compare to ‘El Chapo’ court case
Global News
The former U.S. attorney who oversaw the prosecution and conviction of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman tells Global News there are similarities in both cases.
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 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.
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.
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The former U.S. attorney who oversaw the prosecution and conviction of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman tells Global News there are similarities in both cases.
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