A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., has sentenced Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to a term of life in prison plus 30 years for his role in leading the Sinaloa drug cartel. A life sentence was mandatory; U.S. prosecutors had asked that three decades be added onto Guzman’s punishment.

One of the only suspenseful questions that remained Wednesday was whether Guzman — a notorious figure who did not speak during his long trial — would speak in court in what’s expected to be his last public appearance before heading to a Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. It turned out that the long-pursued drug kingpin wanted to speak, his lawyer said.

“Guzman told U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan before he was sentenced Wednesday that he was denied a fair trial,” the Associated Press reports, adding, “He said Cogan failed to thoroughly investigate claims of juror misconduct in the case.”

Guzman, 62, was extradited to the U.S. in January of 2017 after being arrested in his native Mexico. The terms of his extradition included a U.S. pledge not to seek the death penalty.

A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Guzman in February, finding him guilty of a raft of serious charges, from 26 drug-related violations to a murder conspiracy. His conviction included crimes such as narcotics trafficking, using a firearm in drug crimes and money laundering.

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The U.S. sentence was announced 18 years after President George W. Bush formally declared Guzman a drug lord, imposing U.S. sanctions on him under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Act.

The drug kingpin has repeatedly made headlines during his criminal career — first for the ruthless power he amassed, and later for his seeming ability to break out of any prison in Mexico. In 2015, he escaped from a maximum security prison for the second time, after spending more than a decade eluding Mexican authorities. He lived outside the law for an additional six months, before he was captured in a high-profile operation in early 2016.

Guzman’s lucrative and extensive criminal network extended well beyond Mexico’s borders. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency says his Sinaloa cartel put an exceptionally potent methamphetamine into illegal drug markets in “virtually every corner of Colorado, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming.” During his trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Guzman sent methamphetamine to numerous U.S. locations, from Los Angeles to Minneapolis and from Ohio and Tucson, Arizona.

The agency also said the cartel supplied cocaine and fentanyl in the U.S. “through sophisticated and efficient transportation and distribution networks.”

To elude detection, Guzman paid $1 million to an information technology engineer to set up what authorities called an encrypted communications network to operate his global drug-trafficking operation. By using encrypted cellphones and encrypted apps, prosecutors said, the drug lord could communicate freely with his partners in Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and the U.S.

As his cartel did billions of dollars in business, Guzman rose to become a pop-culture figure in Mexico, where his visage frequently appears on T-shirts, graffiti. In his poverty-stricken home town of Badiraguanto in northwest Mexico, many locals viewed him as a benefactor who sometimes helped them. But elsewhere in his country, he’s viewed as a key figure in a devastating string of drug wars and violence. When the criminal mastermind slipped away from Mexican custody in 2015, he was quickly featured in dozens of narcocorrido songs — ballads about the drug business.

Fueled by drug profits and a growth strategy that relied on brutality and sicario hitmen, Guzman’s godfather-like stature rose above international borders. As the Associated Press reported in 2015:

“During his time as a fugitive, Guzman transformed himself from a middling Mexican capo into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. His fortune grew to be estimated at more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which listed him among the ‘World’s Most Powerful People’ and ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.”

Days after Guzman was found guilty in a New York courtroom, U.S. authorities unsealed new criminal indictments against two of his sons in Mexico. Joaquin Guzman Lopez, 34, and Ovidio Guzman Lopez, 28, were charged with conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana into the United States.

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