Should El Mayo Go to Trial, His Brother & Son Could be Forced to Testify Against Him

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

From a Proceso Article

Vicente Zambada Niebla and Jesús Rey Zambada, son and brother of El Mayo, as protected witnesses would be obliged to testify against the kingpin of kingpins if they are so defined by Judge Cogan. If they do not accept, the act would be considered a serious violation of the agreements they signed.

On Friday, October 18, Mayo was presented before Judge Brian Cogan, of the Eastern District Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, in a procedural hearing in which prosecutors and the drug lord's legal defense presented some of the problems to the magistrate.

Federal prosecutors who accuse Mayo of several drug trafficking charges, but who have one very special one: exporting to the United States synthetic drugs made with fentanyl whose substance killed American citizens, asked the judge to sentence the accused to capital punishment if he is found guilty during a trial.

Cogan contained the anxiety of the prosecutors and the nervousness of Zambada García and his lawyer Frank Pérez, who already knew about the request that the prosecutors would make, by stating that they would have to decide whether he would apply the sentence.

The judge ordered the parties to discuss the issue of the death penalty as the ultimate punishment during another hearing with a finding of guilt by Mayo at trial, possibly at one scheduled for January 15, 2025 or in the time before the session takes place.
Conflict of interest

Another component of conflict of interest and possibly the most complex and interesting of the process in case Mayo goes to trial, is that the Department of Justice presents Jesús Vicente Zambada Niebla, Vicentillo , as one of the incriminating witnesses of the accused.

Putting reality first, the prosecutors, the defense and Cogan will have to decide whether Vicentillo , the firstborn and favorite of the kingpin, would be excluded from appearing in court to testify against his father due to this family tie, which is the judge's prerogative.

Although the prosecutors in the hearing last October did not mention it or add it as another possible conflict of interest in the case, it remains pending whether Jesús Reynaldo Rey Zambada García, brother of Mayo, would be invested as an accusing witness.

In this context, the most important members of the Zambada García family clan – undoubtedly the most powerful and multimillionaire in the world history of drug trafficking and Mexico – would be stabbing each other in the back and betraying each other in a US federal court.

Both Vicentillo and Rey would be forced to come forward to accuse their father and brother, respectively, of being a ruthless drug trafficker and a murderer of dozens, hundreds and even thousands of Americans, for which he deserves to be executed in an American prison.

This is not speculation by Proceso ; the federal indictment by the Department of Justice against Mayo , numbered 1:09-cr-00466-BMC-RLM-5, says it precisely: the accused conspired to traffic cocaine, marijuana, heroin, amphetamines, methamphetamines, and fentanyl, with which he killed American citizens.

A conviction for a single offense of conspiracy to traffic illicit drugs into the United States, under the rule of that country's federal sentencing system, automatically implies a sentence of life imprisonment, although this point is determined by the judge's prerogative.

The accusation against Mayo of “murdering American citizens” that could be two, dozens, hundreds or thousands of people, is based on the fact that the deceased succumbed to an overdose of synthetic drugs made with fentanyl, a lethal substance that the drug lord trafficked.

The death penalty (execution by electric chair or by intravenous administration of a lethal substance) is applied in New York to multiple murderers found guilty in a federal criminal trial, even though this penalty was abolished in the state in 2004.

Source Proceso

Categories: El Mayo, sinaloa cartel